


Long Weekend

by adrian9037363638462



Category: Guns N' Roses
Genre: 1990s, Alcohol, Angst and Humor, Bittersweet, Emotional Constipation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Love Confessions, Love/Hate, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Missed Connections, Old Friends, POV Second Person, Past Drug Use, Reluctant Domesticity, Rough Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wordcount: 50.000-100.000, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:47:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 54,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24830305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrian9037363638462/pseuds/adrian9037363638462
Summary: “Axl?” Izzy says eventually, dragging the word from the back of his throat to the front of his mouth, like it’s the most incredulous fuckin’ thing in the world. Well, who the fuck do you look like? Slash?In 1994, Axl rocks up on Izzy’s doorstep unannounced for an impromptu vacation.
Relationships: Axl Rose/Izzy Stradlin
Comments: 58
Kudos: 65





	1. Friday Evening

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first ever attempt at ao3 so apologies if the formatting looks like ass — this story is already like a couple chapters deep over on rockfic but ive always wanted to try this site so while it’s still unfinished i’m going to dump it here and pretend i have a semi regular update schedule lol.

“Axl?” He says eventually, dragging the word from the back of his throat to the front of his mouth, like it’s the most incredulous fuckin’ thing in the world. Well, fuck do you look like? Slash?

You lick your lips and shift your weight. An nondescript evening breeze blows your hair back; all them years in LA had you thinkin’ fresh air was nothing more than an urban myth. You take a drag of your cigarette, and tell him, “hey, Izz.”

“What are you…” Izzy’s eyes trail to the bags at your feet, and then slam back up to your eyes, “Axl, what are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighbourhood,” you croak.

He raises his eyebrows. You falter under his gaze.

“It’s a long story,” you shrug, holding your cigarette in front of your face, hiding your expression. 

“Is it,” he says dryly, a statement of disbelief rather than a question.

You stare at each other for a few more seconds.

“What’s with the bags,” he says again, no infliction, just deadpan. You both hold each other’s gaze for what feels like a decade. Hey, this ain’t how this was supposed to go. 

Eventually, you take another drag on your cig and ask, “feel like doing an old friend a favour?”

His face softens, but annoyance flashes in his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, though he’s probably thinkin’ a whole lot. You’re thinkin’ too; you’re thinkin’ shit, what a horrible fuckin’ mess you’ve made.

In truth, you didn’t think you’d get this far. ‘Cause good god, Izzy, leavin’ no phone number, no address; you drove your happy ass all the way down here and the fucker had no idea. Though he does have a bit of a sentimental side, maybe you figured if you banged on his door hard enough and told him you’d driven thirty one fuckin’ hours to see him he’d probably let you inside.

But shit, in the back of your head, the entire three fuckin’ days you just kept thinkin’ - what the fuck where you gonna say when he answered the door and asked you why?

You didn’t know, you still don’t, because you don’t know fuckin’ why.

Maybe he’s just the only person you know that lives in the godforsaken middle of fuckin’ nowhere, and that’s exactly where you need to be. Entirely plausible, might actually be the truth. All that’s known to you, right here, right now, is you got into the car with a gym bag full of clothes two, three days ago and you didn’t even think about it, you knew exactly where to go.

Except then it was the middle of the night and you were having a manic episode and you’ve taken your meds since then and around twenty four hours late you realised you didn’t have the slightest fuckin’ clue where the hell you were going so fat load of good that was. But you had a vague idea.

In your ‘92 Allante, you set yourself off on a long haul drive across the country. You didn’t care that the Allante isn’t built for shit like that, and you didn’t care that you’d just decreased it’s value by about ten thousand percent. You were seeing red for the first forty minutes, then you were panicking for two hours. You found yourself in a motel, found yourself yelling at Doug down the receiver of your shitty 90’s cell, telling him _I just need a few days. My sister’s sick. My brother’s sick. My mama’s come back to life, an’ she’s damned sick._

You‘d seen a photo of the place Izzy bought in a real estate mag. He wanted your opinion on it; that was what, three years ago? You saw the location, ‘West Lafayette, IN’, you must’ve pulled a face because he rolled his eyes. But it was a nice place. Not too big ‘cause Izzy loses himself in big places. Not too little ‘cause he wanted people to know he had money, and the motherfucker had money. Your money, but money nonetheless.

“Can I come in?” You feel stupid asking. You hear a dog barking bloody murder in the background. 

He takes a deep breath and looks away. “Uh,” he thinks hard for a minute and then tells you, “yeah, you’d better.”

It was large and brown, the house, you remembered from the one time you visited. Fair bit of brick as well, patchwork stained glass on the front door, christ, what a dramatic fuck he was. Cute little driveway, big ol’ tree outside. It was a nice house, especially for Indiana. Had a roomy porch with a swing, ‘cause even after all these years he’s still a goddamn hick.

Technically, though, so are you. The goddamn sign you threw an empty coke can at on your way past may well say WELCOME HOME, AXL! instead of LAFAYETTE CITY LIMITS.

You stamp out your cig, staining his porch, and you pick up your bags and step inside. Your boots sound against the hard wood floor. As suspected, the entire fuckin’ place reeks of bergamot or patchouli or some shit. You pinpoint the smell instantly. Reminds you of ’90. Reminds you of Izzy.

When you found the place, you had to blink a few times, certain it was some kind of fuckin’ mirage glistening in the middle of assfuck Indianan nowhere. You’d pulled over into the dirt, jumped over the door and pulled your bags from the backseat. Soon as you touched them, you got this horrible feeling of _motherfucker, are you crazy?_ and you nearly gunned it all the way back home. Then you dropped your bags, lit a cigarette, and sat yourself down in the middle of the road.

You’d stared at the view facing Izzy’s house as you smoked. Choppy grass and corn, big fucking fields, horrible smell of cornflower. You knew damn well the fucking hippie left your band to sit out amongst the cobs and the bugs and strum his guitar and sing motherfuckin’ _kumbaya_ to his dog and his w- shit, his wife. 

Shit, man, his _wife._

You turn your head when the door closes behind you.

You know, it’s a sweet little place on the inside, Izzy’s house. All ebony furniture, greens and reds and purples smartly dotted around. Reminds you of that colour theory shit, you remember your interior designer chattering on about it to Erin, long ago. You sat bored, but she was all bright eyed and fascinated. She needed plums and charcoals and silver furniture ‘cause her eyes were brown, apparently, and you needed golds and lilacs and oranges because yours were blue, and you remember that Izzy’s eyes are hazel. 

“In there,” Izzy gestures to an open room on your right. You walk in and take a seat on one of his couches. You notice the offensive, familiar dog curled up in an armchair, seemingly unassed about your arrival. Another one, however - an ugly little French bulldog - comes skittering in from a room over, barking. _Annica’s changed,_ you go to say out loud, but you restrain yourself ‘cause Izzy won’t laugh and you don’t want to waste your sense of humour on him.

“Can I smoke?” You find yourself asking.

Izzy sits himself opposite you and furrows his brows, “Ax, you just had one.”

“I’m quite fuckin’ anxious, Izz, unfortunately,” you cross your legs and fold your arms. “Do I gotta remind you how many packs _you_ used to go through?”

“Man, what the fuck’s going on?” He shakes you off, and the yappy little bulldog stands at his feet, barking at you. “Shut the fuck up,” Izzy snaps at it, kicking it lightly up the ass.

You snort. Izzy looks back up at you as if to say no, you’re not off the hook.

“What’s going on, Axl?” Izzy asks directly, and in his eyes you know he’s telling you _look, don’t fuck me around, just be straight up._ So you are.

“Can I crash here?” You ask. He bristles, like he wasn’t expecting you to just be straight up. “Just for a few days.”

He’s silent, leaning forward on his needs, eyes scanning around the room.  
“How many days is a few?” He asks, narrowing his eyes.

“They let me have three,” you say honestly, neglecting to mention the amount of abuse you shouted down your cellphone in order to actually get them.

“Axl, I…” he trails off. Obviously he doesn’t want you staying, you should’ve just turned round. Then a concern flits over his face, very briefly, and he composes himself as he realises he should know better. “Did something happen?”

You look away from his face as you fumble for your cigs. “Uh, not with anyone, no. With myself, then, uh, yeah, maybe.”

He scrunches his nose, “fuck does that mean?”

You lick your lips. “I just…needed to get away, for a bit. Figured you’d understand.”

“You didn’t think to call me before showin’ up on my damn doorstep?” He gestures his with arm, voice raising. Now that he’s processing it, he’s getting angry.

“You didn’t leave me no number, Izz.”

“I left you so many,” he says incredulously.

You blink, “you didn’t.”

“I left you- I left ‘em with your fuckin’... assistant,” he spits out. “Doubt they ever got to you, though.”

You blink, “which assistant?”

”Weedy motherfucker with the glasses, Axl, I don’t fuckin’ know. Ain’t fuckin’ matter no more, right?”

He gestures at you, where you’re sat on his couch, a long way from home. Though you suppose that depends on your definition of home. You’re both quiet for a minute. You light up another cig, not waiting any longer for the go ahead. 

“No,” you admit, “think I’d wanna antagonise you once last time by showing up unannounced anyway.”

“One last time,” he muses, sitting back in his seat, “you going somewhere?”

“Doubt you’ll want to see me again after this anyway, right?” You laugh bitterly. “Got an ashtray?”

“No,” he scoffs.

“Got anything that could substitute an ashtray?”

He just glances on, amused, so you ash your cig in the vase on his coffee table. He snorts.

“Didn’t know you got another one,” you gesture to the bulldog.

“Annica’s,” Izzy says, not batting an eye, nudging the pudgy thing with his shoe. “Her name’s Ripley.”

“Shit name,” you raise your eyebrows. He shrugs. “Where is Annica, anyway?” You find yourself asking.

“Visiting family,” he says almost immediately, like he’s trained to say it.  
Trouble in paradise, Jeffrey?

You raise your eyebrows and take a drag on your cig, looking round the room idly.

“You actually mind if I stay with you, Izzy?” You ask sincerely, quietly. “I just- I gotta clear my head. I am sorry about droppin’ in on you but…”

He flops back on the couch entirely, sighing, and the big dog in the corner gets up and slowly walks over to him, hauling himself up and settling in a ball right beside him. His fingers twist in his fur.

“Good boy, Tread,” Izzy sighs, closing his eyes. 

Treader, of course, how could you fucking forget? The thought of all that fur from the first leg of the tour- you shudder.

The air grows real awkward all of a sudden, and you’re both acutely aware that you haven’t seen each other in ass-shit months.

The two of you sit in silence.  
Shit, it’s unbearable.

“Coffee,” you blurt out. Izzy stops petting Treader and looks at you like you’ve just up and taken a shit on his hardwood floor. You compose yourself. “I’m gonna make- you okay if I make some coffee?”

Izzy looks you up and down, and then turns his head away. “Suit yourself.”

“You want any?” You barely wait for the answer. 

He seems to think, then clicks his tongue and wiggles his brows. “Decaf,” he says dryly, still turned away. 

“Christ, Izz,” you frown, “live a little.”

“I did live a little,” he lazily rolls his head along the back of the couch and stares hard at you. A ghost of a smile hangs round his mouth. “I died a few fuckin’ times too, would you believe.”

He’s got you in a corner there. “Uh-huh,” you say, biting your lip and walking fast into the kitchen.

Christ. You run the faucet and splash water over your face. What the fuck is wrong with you?

No, really, Axl. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Shit, you think. You really fucked it up this time. You don’t know what power on God’s sweet, green Earth possessed you to think for even a second that Izzy would welcome you home with open fucking arms, kiss you all over, proclaim _oh, how I’ve missed you, you little psychopathic gingerbread motherfucker_ –

“I’ve got a spare room,” he appears in the doorway, leaning precariously against it as the dogs swirl round his legs. “You said a couple days, right?”

Your stomach really sinks.  
But you’re thankful.

“Fuck, Izz,” you rub a hand over your wet face, gripping onto the sink with the other. “I’m real sorry. I’m- I’m tryin’ to manage things but, uh, sometimes-”

“It’s cool,” he shrugs, kicking away from the doorway. “I know what you’re like.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets and strides into the kitchen, filling up the coffee pot. _”Everybody needs some time on their own,”_ he says, not spitefully but with a hard edge to his voice. You grimace.

“You’d think they’d get it by now, right?” You smile, aiming for a lighthearted joke, but Izzy just quirks a brow.

“You been taking your meds?” He asks sincerely, randomly, and you nearly fall on your ass.

“Jesus, Izz,” you exclaim. “Ain’t seen you for god only fuckin’ knows how long and _that’s_ what you ask me?”

“If you were takin’ your meds, you’d be hatin’ me with every inch of you right about now,” he says, so fuckin’ calm and disinterested that you wanna smack him down on the floor. You know what he really means, ‘cause he knows that if you took your meds you wouldn’t be on his doorstep with fuckin’ bags.

“I am takin’ ’em,” you narrow your eyes. “In fact, I was just about to fuckin’ take ‘em, so there.”

“Okay,” he could not sound more bored as he pulls out two mugs from the cupboard. 

“Seriously,” your voice has a bad stain on it. He’s annoying you.

He casts a look over his shoulder and meets your eyes, through thick sunbrown hair. “I believe you,” his face is such a picture of reassurance, condescendence but genuineness that you can’t even tell if he does believe you, whether he’s making fun of you, and you remember just how hard he became to read once he got sober.

You shut up as he pours your coffee, having embarrassed yourself enough. He slyly shoves you a mug that probably hasn’t seen the light of day since ‘85 ‘cause it’s got a picture of The A-Team on the front, but you know damn well that Izzy has a penchant for all kinds of weird shit and you guess that the woman that married him ain’t much better so you keep your mouth shut.

He pours himself some in a mug that says in bold, block letters, _Stockholm Marina_. 

“Help yourself to sugar and whatever,” he says. “Got regular milk and oat milk.”

“Oat milk,” you look at him like he’s grown another head.

He looks at you like you’re stupid, “it’s milk made from oats.” He takes a sip of his coffee.

“Man, _oat fuckin’ milk_ , you’ve really changed,” you take a sip of your own coffee and burn the roof of your mouth. You glance over to him. “Hey. Thought you only drank decaf.”

“This is decaf,” he says. “Didn’t know if caffeine fucks with your meds or not.”

“You coulda’ just asked.”

“Does it matter?” But he smiles a very small, proud smile. “Last thing you fuckin’ need is a pot of fuckin’ coffee, man.”

You frown, and opt to change the subject. “How’s Annica?” You ask, catching the sight of his wedding band. You test your balance, to try and analyse him like he just analysed you - see if the waters of sweet matrimony really are as murky as they seem.

He stiffens. “She’s fine. Great.”   
He initially tries to appear as warm as he can, and then remembers that it’s you he’s talking to and he’s obviously trying too hard and drops it.

You remember meeting Annica once or twice, this lovely, sweet and fuck, _intelligent_ thing, and you paid no mind until all of a sudden they were married and you remember thinking _why do that to the poor girl, Izzy?_

She wasn’t a groupie or a model or a singer or anything like the girls most of you went for, anything like the girls Izzy went for. You remember Angela - god, what a shit show, for all of the five minutes they were engaged - and Desi, however sweet she was, and how Izzy really fucked her over in the end. You remember all the nameless fucks in between. There were so many nameless fucks, and not as many genderless fucks but enough for you to know that Izzy would try to fuck anything that made prolonged eye contact with him.

When he brought Annica to a show the first time round, you remember thinking how smart she was. That was what occurred to you the most. You didn’t even think to ask her what she did, you figured she probably just modelled or some shit. When the words _wildlife biologist_ and _science degree_ left Izzy’s mouth you nearly fell flat on your ass. And now he’s probably gone and fucked her up too.

“Good,” you smile warmly. “I’m gonna grab my- from my bag.” You still don’t like saying the word _pills_ around him, because absolutely every time you say it you put him one step ahead of you.

“Sure,” he sips his decaf and you slip away, leaving Mr. T and the gang steaming away on the counter. 

You float into the living room, finally taking off your coat and settling it down on the couch next to your bags. You reach in to grab your pills, and jump back almost immediately as an ugly fucking dog jumps in front of your face, snorting all over the place. You make a noise in surprise - a _ygah_ of sorts - and she barks threateningly.

“Izzy, come move your dumb fucking dog,” is what you mean to say, but it comes out a little more like _izz*come*^youfuckig ##%—d*ofg_. Izzy floats to the doorway, mug in hand, and ever the fucking peacemaker, looks at you like you’re stupid.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her,” he says, grimacing.

“Who does she think she is,” you find yourself saying, squaring up in defence.

Izzy rolls his eyes and strides over, holding his mug away in one hand, and takes Ripley under the stomach, lifting the wriggling beast away with ease. 

“She’s harmless,” Izzy says. “Dumb as shit but she’s harmless.”

“Ugly as shit,” you breathe, and then remember what you were meant to be doing and dive into the zipped part of your gym bag. You grab your pills and pop the bottle open with ease - you’re an old pro - tap out two and stride over to Izzy, taking his coffee and washing them back.  
He pulls a face, disgusted but slightly impressed. You want to imagine he’s a little turned on too.

“Nice,” he grits his teeth, and throws a still-wriggling Ripley onto the couch behind him. “Grab your bags and follow me.”

You do as you’re told and goddamn, you hate it. You’re still, much as you hate to admit it, weak for him.

And not really in a romantic or sexual way, not even necessarily submissive, just trusting. Because he’s Izzy, and for all your troubles, he still is Izzy; the one constant in a sea of variables, nearly.   
Not quite, but nearly.

And the fact that he’s leading you to his spare bedroom after you showed up at his doorstep with zero fucking notice, not even _really_ laying you out for it when he would’ve been justified in doing so, means he feels it too. Asking if you took your meds, Jesus, Mr. _Oh-I-Don’t-Give-A-Fuck-About-Anything-By-The-Way-Here’s-Decaf-Just-In-Case._ As much of a pain in his ass you were, you were always around to reel him back.

What was that damn picture book you used to read to Dylan, about the kid whose mom would rock him to sleep every night, and then ends with the kid all grown up rockin’ his poor, elderly mama instead? The one that you had to finish early because you were tearing up? Damn, that’s you and Izz. You used to look out for him, and now he’s lookin’ the fuck out for you. Mr. High and Mighty. Mr. Clean and Sober. Mr. Brownstone.

You trudge up the stairs, feeling a little at his mercy. Like a dog with his ears down.

He takes you to a room at the end of the landing. A warm, dull Indianan orange lights up the room through the drawn curtains. Izzy walks in and flicks the bedside lamp. A decent little room, tiny wardrobe, nice bed, soft blankets and cushions and a mirror in the corner. The framed art on the walls is what really throws you, and then after that you can see all the Annica in the house. Fuck’s sake, of course, what possessed you to think _Izzy_ would ever have a guest room?

You walk in behind him and throw your bags and coat down on the bed. You sit there idly for a sec and he folds his arms, leaning against the wall. 

“What?” You nearly snap at him on instinct. He half laughs under his breath, looking away.

“I charge by the night,” he glances back at you, a mischievous glint in his eye.

“Better treat me sweet if you want that fifth star,” you lean back on the bed. 

He bites the inside of his mouth. 

“I’ll treat you how you deserve,” he says eventually, trying to suppress a smile. You blink, and get a sense of nostalgia when you have to remind yourself that he’s not flirting with you at all. 

He kicks away from the wall - he keeps doing that, motherfucker probably thinks he’s a greaser or some shit - clicks his tongue and makes for the door. 

“Got three bathrooms,” he says on the way out, “use whichever. I’m down the hall if you set fire to anything during the fuckin’ night.”

Then he disappears down the hall, vanishing into thin air. You get up and close the door behind him, though it won’t really close properly and keeps popping open. 

You sit back on the bed and breathe in deep, leaning forward on your knees, taking in all that’s happened in the past hour, and also the past, uh, 72 of them. 

And you burst into tears.

You’d bet your life that Izzy knew this would happen and left you alone, call it gypsy intuition or what the fuck ever. But you can’t help it, man, you just _cry._

Your shitty 90’s cell has no battery, which is fair the fuck enough, you don’t want it to have battery. You’d just be yelling at everyone. You’ll use Izzy’s house phone when it’s time to call, unless he’s gone a lot more Hare Krishna than you initially thought and slashed all his wires. He’s like that, Izz. Where you’re quote-unquote _not well_ , Izzy is paranoid and neurotic underneath a lethargic, cool exterior. Motherfucker probably has a doomsday bunker built underneath his goddamn house. When he was real bad with coke, round ‘88-89, and your scaffold was slowly shaking in the wind, you were so fuckin’ bad for each other. Real poor, _Je-e-e-esus._ And that’s when it started getting dysfunctional. You mean, it was always dysfunctional, ‘cause Izzy was a junkie and downright dangerous and you were just a textbook case of fucked up childhood, but ‘88 was when things started to become bitter. 

In reality, you and Izz were never super close, and that’s the fact of it. You just kind of ended up together, like the universe wanted it for the two of you, but like you said before: he was always there, and that was truly good enough. 

God, you cry. Not over Izzy, just out of exhaustion, of frustration, of what a mess you’ve made out of things. You sob silently for about five minutes and then you find yourself stopping, the beginning of a wet migraine coming on, and you lie back on the bed with your arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. The air’s warm but it hits your wet face cool. You breathe easy, and your pills start kicking in; side effects include drowsiness, and sandwiched in between fatigue and anxiety and reverse homesickness, you slowly conk out.


	2. Friday Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Listen, Izz, not to sound insensitive but out of sheer curiosity, where do you keep your fuckin’ booze?”_
> 
> On Friday, Axl attempts to be a polite houseguest and Izzy gets his personal space invaded.

You’re smoking a cigarette on Izzy’s porch. You sit on the steps, leaning forward on your knees, toes curling over the edge.

In the five to ten minutes you’ve been out here, the sky has gone from peachy baby blues to a rich indigo. Indiana twilight, ain’t nothing special about it.

You’d woken up around forty minutes ago on your belly with your arms thrown round your face, drool everywhere and the shape of your watch imprinted in red on your cheek. You‘d sat up, for a minute convinced you were in another motel room on the I-65, and you slowly came to terms with the fact that you weren’t. No stomach sinking, no panicking, no irrational anger, just a dead arm and a vulgar need to piss out a stream as long as the Wabash River.

Having sufficiently pissed, you’d groggily trudged into the kitchen, where Izzy was cooking dinner; yes, Izzy coke-for-breakfast, booze-for-lunch, smack-for-dinner Stradlin was cooking you dinner.

Now, Izzy’s got a perfectly nice dining table and chair set. In fact, it’s lovely. All ebony varnish, intricate little detailing carved into the corners. You can totally imagine him buying it, hand in hand with his wife, walking through a flea market or some shit, and you were almost taken aback by how typically Izzy it is to never eat a meal off it, ever; he’d nestled into the corner of the sofa in the living room, legs pulled up, spooning some kind of veggie stir fry into his mouth. Like some kind of alien who could pass for perfectly human, but with no concept of table manners.

“There’s a bowl out there,” he‘d said in between mouthfuls. Indeed, there was, and you took him up on that, sick of the taste of highwayside diner food.

And god, it tasted so very...like vegetables. But it was fresh, and it was homecooked, and you ate all of it. You’d curled up on the opposite couch, polished it off and told him you were headed outside for a cig; he’d said nothing and dismissed you with a bounce of his head.

And that’s where you are now. 

Indiana is nice. That’s all there is to it, it’s just fuckin’ nice. The people ain’t, the memories ain’t, but the sky is, the air is and the silence sure is. It’s no nirvana, there’s no euphoric sense of finding yourself but it’s just real nice to be alone. Part of you resents Izzy for takin’ this little slice of Solitude, IN, all for himself when you needed it a hell of a lot more, then you remember that you’d rather die than move back here.

Treader had followed you out and sits curled on the porch swing. Every so often, he sighs and you instinctively turn round to look at him; you’re reminded of how fine it must be to be a fuckin’ dog. 

Shit, you smoke away. Ironic, really, but the nicotine anchors into your lungs and you feel a little like an old house, creaking as you settle. Then you hear footsteps behind you and Izzy sits himself down beside you.

You bite your cheek, “can’t keep away from me?”

“Just makin’ sure you ain’t scarin’ the neighbours,” he comments dryly.

You offer him the cigarette. He shakes his head almost violently, holding his hand up.

“Don’t believe you’ve given up everything, Stradlin,” you scan him up and down. “There’s gotta be something.”

He goes to berate you for even thinking of asking him that, but he’s always had a thing about letting you know when you get to him. Never wants to show you a single bit of vulnerability. That fleshed out when he got sober.

Then he scans you back like a supermarket laser, up and down, then stops on your cig and plucks it out your fingers. He takes a single drag, inhales long and exhales hard and he does it right into your face. Makes your eyes water.   
He stays in that position for so many seconds that you think he’s reached nirvana on the porch step where you didn’t, then he stubs out your cig and stands up, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

“Does nothin’ for me,” he says, shrugging. He looks up at the sky. “Reckon it’s gonna rain later. You comin’?”

And he walks back inside. You hang back for a few seconds, breathing in the air as the temperature drops. Then, as you grow a bit chilly, you retreat.

“Come on,” you say to Treader, gesturing with your head towards the door. He looks up at you, and then looks away. You pat your knees and he pays no notice. “Motherfucker, come on.”

He looks at you again, and then looks away and sighs. You open your mouth to pick a fight and then realise he’s a goddamn dog and you go inside.

“Your damn dog ain’t movin’,” you call into the house.

“He’ll do what he wants,” Izzy drawls back, and you can see his willowy shadow in the kitchen, pouring a cup of some herbal fuckin’ tea. Two cups. “Leave the front door open but close the porch.”

You do as he damn well says.

“Chamomile,” he says upon his return, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and hands you a cup. “Good for anxiety. Sleep as well.”

You sit on the small loveseat backed up on the wall as Izzy sits in the corner of the sofa adjacent. He’s draped in a some hick plaid shirt that’s buttoned up lazily, tied off at the end ‘cause he never grew out of that, and rests comfortably in a pair of adidas sweatpants. You, meanwhile, are still in the t-shirt and raggedy jeans you arrived in. Ripley sits on the loveseat with you, desperate for you to play with her. 

Izzy’s eyes flick over the TV - the news - as he blows on his tea. You copy him and blow on yours. 

“So,” you begin, trying to make polite conversation, “you got anythin’ planned this weekend?”

“Nah,” he looks at you. “Not ‘til Annica’s back.”

“And when’s she back?”

“Don’t piss yourself, she’s not back ‘til the first.”

“I like her,” you say. “She’s sweet. Bring her down to LA, we’ll double date.”

“Double date,” Izzy raises his brows, “with you and the wife you don’t have?”

Ouch.

“I’ll bring Slash,” you counter and he snorts obnoxiously.

“Nah, I ain’t got nothin’ on,” he sips his tea. “It’s just me and you this weekend.”

“Don’t shit your pants out of excitement or anything, Izz.”

He tries to suppress a smile. “I’m gonna need to run into town for a few things tomorrow. You gonna be alright while I’m gone?”

You stop stirring your tea and look up at him. “Can’t I come with you?” You ask. He looks surprised. 

“Uh,” he blinks, and very uncertainly says, “sure.”

You nod, and then he adds, “wouldn’t ‘a thought you’d want to.”

“It’d be nice,” you say.   
Sure, it’d be nice. Like you said before, Indiana is nice. Dictionary definition nice.

“It’ll be warm,” Izzy frowns and blows on his tea. 

“You make a habit outta personalisin’ your forecasts?”

“Call it intuition,” he says dryly. Gypsy intuition, psychic on his mama’s side. Always been a damned know-it-all.

“You shoulda been a meteorologist, Izz,” you comment.

He grimaces. “No thanks. I remember you jackin’ it to the weathergal on channel five.”

“You really think you’re jackin’ it material?”

You lock eyes, and he gives you a little smile - you tell me. 

“Just sayin’,” he shrugs, still sly-eyed, and stretches his arms above his head. “I’ll avoid a similar fate where I can.”

You blink.

“No fuckin’ worries here, Izzy,” you say through raised eyebrows. Pleased with himself, he smiles. You blow on your tea to cool it and then take a cautious sip. As usual, you burn your tongue.

“Tastes like shit,” you stare down into the mug. This time, from the Isbell households collection of eccentric and niche mugs, he’s given you your horrible tea in an I Heart Karlskrona mug and he’s cradling his in an eyesoreish Starsky & Hutch one.

Fucker could set up a highway museum of all the weird shit he has. Would be a good investment. He could call it the Weird Shit Museum. Hold for applause.

He acknowledges you with a grunt as his eyes flick over the news. Christ, he’s a paranoid fuck. You take another sip of your tea and recoil. 

“You ain’t got no sugar?” you ask him.

He casts a glance at you and says, “don’t really use sugar.”

“Yeah, but do you got any?”

“Shit’s built on African labour, man, it ain’t right.”

Here he is, the Izzy you remember. You and Slash used to codeword him as Doomsday. The coke that bought him a tin foil hat is long outta the picture but the effects never go away.

He catches you looking incredulous and then clarifies, “we do got some, but I wouldn’t recommend usin’ it. Been sat there since we bought the damn house.”

He sips on his tea, and then turns back to the news. “Sweetener’s probably your best bet. There’s a jar in one of the cupboards by the sink.”

You slap your knees and stand up, walking to the kitchen. On your way, he calls after you, “you’ll ruin the tea though.”

“Okay,” you call back, hindering in the ability to possibly care less.

In the kitchen, you yank open every single cupboard in search of sweetener. You pull open about four in one long sweep and go to open a fifth before you catch sight of a glistening, carbonated mirage.

In Izzy’s kitchen cupboard, just above the stove, sits an unopened 200ml bottle of cheap ass Chardonnay. For cooking purposes, of course; but you suddenly feel incredibly thirsty. 

After your first night on the road, you’d bought a cheap bottle of whiskey from the store across the road from the motel and drank it straight from the bottle until you fell asleep. You’d kept it until the next night, and did the same all over again. When you’d finished it, you’d got up to buy some more and subsequently fell over. In the end, you just decided to sleep it off.

You think, after all that driving, you’re deserving of a tiny, small glass of red or something. You close the cupboard.

“Listen, Izz, not to sound insensitive but out of sheer curiosity, where do you keep your fuckin’ booze?” you call into the living room. 

Izzy doesn’t speak for a sec, you’re thinkin’ that maybe he’s too obsessed with that damn news; then when he replies, it’s an incredibly curt “I don’t got any.”

“What?” you call back.

When he doesn’t reply, you stick your head round the doorframe.

“I ain’t talkin’ about hard whiskey- you don’t have no fuckin’ wine?” You knit your eyebrows. “No champagne?”

He turns round in his seat and looks at you like you’re stupid. “I don’t fuckin’ drink, Ax.”

You stare at him incredulously. You get it, the poor bastard grappled with heroin addiction for goddamn years, couldn’t come off it without getting addicted to something else but goddamn, no wine? What if someone fuckin’ important came round wanting to get drunk? What if Steven Tyler dropped in? Or the President? Or - God forbid - you?

“No shit,” you scoff, folding your arms and walking into the living room. “But what about Annica?”

“What about her?”

“She don’t drink neither?”

He shrugs. “She’ll maybe have a glass if we’re out, but she don’t make a habit of it.”

“Huh,” you look thoughtful about it.

“You ain’t bullyin’ me into drinkin’,” he says matter-of-factly as he changes the channel for the first time tonight. Halle-fucking-lujah.

“I‘m doin’ no such thing,” you call as you walk back into the kitchen, picking up your horrible lukewarm, artificially sweetened tea. You go to return to the living room but stop in your tracks, and then pour more than half your cup down the sink so it looks like you’ve at least tried to drink it. “Was just curious, is all.” Then you walk back to your seat.

The porch door swings open as Treader nudges his way inside, finally, and settles down at the fireplace with a rope chew toy. You take the initiative to close the front door.

“What’s this?” You gesture to the TV as you walk past. 

“Fuck if I know,” he shrugs. “Movie?”

And a movie it is. You sit down on the opposite end of the sofa that Izzy’s sitting on rather than the loveseat, where Ripley sits obsessively staring at you and panting heavily even though she ain’t fuckin’ moved for an hour. 

You and Izzy both watch the TV, and become quietly engrossed in a competition of who can guess the movie first.

“Easy Rider,” you hurl a random guess as you light a cigarette.

Izzy scoffs. You always did stupid shit like this. Boring summer days back down this neck of the woods, you and Izz and two or three other kids would be laying round the radio, sharing joints, guessing the song from the riff. Izzy always won, so it stopped being fun in the end. You carried it on into your young adulthood, into LA, when you’d sit drinkin’ beers among the junk and the waste and try your luck at guessin’ commercials. Then when you started touring, you’d sit and try to guess what Steven had taken on the bus to have knocked him out stone cold. Good times.

“Definitely not,” Izzy frowns. “Gotta be a western. Look at that sand.”

“Midnight Cowboy,” you guess again and Izzy side-eyes you.

“Midnight Cowboy was not a fuckin’ western.”

“Had sand in it though.”

“It was set in motherfuckin’ _New York_.”

“There was sand in it! When they’re, I don’t know, on that bus or some shit.”

“Axl, man, there’s sand right there,” he points at the tv. “And there ain’t no fuckin’ bus nowhere.”

You and Izzy go back and forth. Izzy puts his money on Westworld until he’s unable to spot a robot, then he goes off swearin’ that it’s Butch fuckin’ Cassidy. A Fistful of Dollars, you counter, and Izzy comes back at you with True Grit. You puff away on your cigarette and rack your brain.

“Peter fuckin’ Fonda!” You shout all of a sudden, shooting forward and pointing at the TV with your cigarette. Izzy jumps ten metres out of his skin and both Ripley and Treader jump up and bark loudly in fright.

“Fucking hell, Ax!” Izzy exclaims.

“That’s Peter Fonda, Izz,” you shake your head obliviously and lean forward on your legs. Poor Izzy looks like he’s just been tasered. “I _told_ you it was Easy Rider!” 

“Jesus,” he mutters, looking at you like you’ve just shot a hole through his roof. “That ain’t Peter fuckin’ Fonda anyway.”

“It fuckin’ is.”

“James Caan.”

You turn round and stare at him. He ignores you and focuses on the screen, but he’s biting back a grin.

“You’re one sore fuckin’ loser, Izz,” you shake your head. _”James fuckin’  
Caan,”_ you murmur under your breath. He’s a goddamn moron. 

“Fuck that,” he says, still staring at the TV, “you cheated.”

“Oh, you think I studied the motherfuckin’ TV guide beforehand?”

He cracks a smile.

“Shut up and watch the movie,” he says, polishing off his tea. You do as you’re told, and then you reach over and stub out your cig in the same vase as earlier.

About forty minutes into the movie, you start fidgeting and feeling drowsy so you excuse yourself.

“Mind if I have a shower?” You ask in between yawns, stretching your arms above your head.

“Sure,” Izzy shrugs, so annoyingly, utterly indifferent. You turn to leave when he calls after you, “better use mine.”

You look over your shoulder, “sorry?”

“Use my bathroom,” he says, glancing at you. “In my bedroom. The water runs cold in the spares.”

You frown, “yeah, no problem. Night, Izz.”

“Night,” he murmurs, and as you leave Treader takes your place on the couch, hauling himself up and throwing his head over Izzy’s leg, sighing deeply. Ripley’s eyes follow you, her head turning like she’s in The fucking Exorcist, but she stays put on the loveseat.

“Thanks again,” you say all of a sudden, and it comes out a little louder than you thought it would. He looks up at you and really looks at you, for the first time since you woke up, and you just look at each other.

“It’s-“ he starts and then stops, frowning. Then he sighs, “yeah. We can talk about it all tomorrow.”

“Talk about-“

“Feel like there’s things you’ve left outta your story, am I wrong?” Izzy’s words, like they always were, are harsh but not malicious. His fingers twist into Treader’s fur.

“If you wanna play therapist, Izzy, then that’s on you.”

He smirks. “I have enough fuckin’ experience.”

“You think so?”

“I have a fuckin’ holiday home in your head, you know.”

You snort. He really overvalues his place in your life. Think he realises that when you both draw quiet and the atmosphere morphs into a saddened stand-off, just like in them shitty westerns you were listing off.

“Nah, we- we can talk about it,” Izzy nods, and looks away. “If you want to, we can.”

You’re about to tell him I didn’t drive 30 fuckshit hours away from all my bullshit just to sit here and talk about it for the fucking weekend but that won’t do nobody any good. You know that. And Izzy’s words, however harsh and minced are still rooted in compassion for you, even after all this time.

You look him up and down and an unknowable emotion flashes across his face, as if he’s expecting your outburst. You smile at him as genuinely as you can.

“Thanks, Izz.” You croak, nod at him and then turn to leave for bed.

“Goodnight, Axl,” he calls after you.

And you trudge up the stairs, into the darkness of the landing and make for the room at the end of the hall. 

You step into Izzy’s bedroom and flick on the lights. A large bed sits in front of you, messily made, with odd pillows and throw blankets strewn about. The rest of the room is immaculate, clean floor, organised bedside tables, wardrobe door firmly shut and not bursting at the seams like yours back home. He’s got an ensuite, fancy fucker, and it’s side-eyeing you from about six feet away. Some clothes are thrown over the arm of a chair, yeah, alright, fine. That’s just sign of life. Sign that Izzy lives here.

God, it’s so fucking- like him.

So fucking like him to not make his bed properly, goddamn it. To throw his clothes over the goddamn chair, you suddenly get so annoyed by the sight of this bedroom that you just- you recoil. You feel so uncomfortable standing alone in a place that feels, looks, smells like Izzy, you feel targeted. You shut off the lights and make off down the other end of the hall, and opt for a cold shower instead.

It is indeed cold, but you brace against it and shove your entire head under, you chatteringly scrub yourself down with Izzy’s/Annica’s flowery natural shit. Dripping wet, you hop across the hall in your towel and fish your toothbrush out of your gym bag. You brush your teeth, you drag a brush through your hair, you throw fresh clothes on even though you’re still wet and then you peel back the covers like you’re performing surgery. And you slip in. And you get comfortable, and you close your eyes. 

There’s a period where, in the darkness, you do succumb to a kind of half slumber, a rest, where you’re still largely aware of everything around you. Like you’re once again resident to a purgatory, or maybe stuck in a coma, you can hear Izzy and the dogs padding off to bed. Motherfucker would probably make his wife take the couch over that damned dog. This is what you think about when you’re resting, and you do open your eyes eventually. After what feels like ten fucking years - when you check the alarm clock it’s been thirty five minutes. And you’re awoken by a horrible, bastard cold. And the loud sound of static. What?

You sit up, looking around blearily, and you’re drawn to the window. You wrap your arms round yourself and trudge over, feeling the draft, and pull the curtains out and well, fuck you sideways with a fire hydrant, what do you know? It’s damn raining.

But this, oh, this is Indiana rain. Thick, warm, soupy Indiana rain, bringing with it both chill and humidity. You ain’t missed it, but you open the window and feel the curtains swing and your hair blow slightly as the air seeps in. Fuck, you’re cold.

You grab an old pullover from out of your bag, and then you grab your cigs from the nightstand. Leaning out of the window, you shakily light up, and watch the country lanes. For late night, it’s so bright outdoors. The sky is a murky purple, you remember when you were little and it was dark coming out of church, you’d tell your mama that it looked like grapes and blackberries. Even your dad cracked a smile at that one. Yeah, he’d say, you’re right.

You puff away, rubbing your head with your hand. Indiana rain gives you a headache. Pressure drop, just like Izzy sang about, how did that old song go? Pressure drop, oh pressure, oh yeah, pressure’s gonna drop-

You laugh to yourself, yeah, fucker’s a real poet.

You smoke at the window until you get too cold, then you throw your cig away and clamp it shut.

The chill, however, is already in the air.   
When you wean yourself back into bed, you find yourself tossing and turning for another ten to twenty, having to curl up because the blankets wont reach your shoulders. 

You’re damn cold.

And fuck, maybe you’re just hypersensitive to all this shit cos of the long haul drive, the emotional backlog, the sheer exhaustion and contempt for being alive right now but of course, you can’t fuckin’ sleep, because you’re damn cold.

You groan and knead at your eyes with the bottom of your palm, thrashing the covers away in frustration. Maybe Izz ain’t asleep yet, he could turn on the heat. You get out of bed again and pad along the hall to the room at the end. 

Yeah, in the dead of humid indianan autumn, he’ll turn on his godfucked central heating cos you’re standing over him, hulking and half fuckin’ naked in the middle of the night and demanding it. Hell, worth a try. You push the door open with your hand.

As your eyes adjust to the dark you can make out a silhouette under the covers, on his stomach, arm thrown out across the bed spooning a phantom wife. Treader sits asleep at the foot of the bed and Ripley is curled on the floor. Izzy’s body rises and falls as he sleeps, mousey hair splayed out across the pillow. You feel so incredibly voyeuristic all of a sudden, peaking on a picture like this and go to retreat, but Ripley stirs and man, does she rip into you for waking her up. 

You hush her but she gets louder, energised after a nap, and you go to leave but she follows, nudging the door and harassing you out into the hall. 

“Fuck off!” You hiss, and once again you realise you’re arguing with a dog. Inevitably, Izzy stirs. 

“What- Axl?” he groans, sitting up. 

“How do you shut her up,” you move backwards but she insists on jumping up, scratching at your legs, biting your ankles. You reel your leg back and-

“She thinks you’re playing,” Izzy appears at the door before you can boot her, sleepily rubbing his eye with the back of his hand. His shirt swamps him, hem of his sleeves resting round his knuckles. He stands before you in that, a pair of boxers and nothing else. 

“Well, make her think I’m not,” you say between gritted teeth.

Izzy stops rubbing his eyes and audibly huffs, you can feel him rolling his eyes instead, and he lunges forward to swipe her up. 

“Did you need somethin’?” He says, raspy and tired. 

“Huh?”

“Ain’t you at my door?”

“Was watchin’ you sleep, Stradlin, got a problem with that?”

He half laughs, kind of blows air out his nose a little harder. He strokes Ripley as she begins to settle, but still snorting and looking around maniacally. 

“Just- I’m cold.”

He looks up at you with a face that says are you being serious?

“Just wondering if you had heating or somethin’ you could turn on.”

He blinks long and slow, wondering if you’re for real.

“You know- don’t worry about it,” you roll your eyes and turn back down the hall. 

“Take Ripley,” he says suddenly, and when you turn around he’s holding her in one outstretched arm, like an offensive weapon.

“Why the fuck-“

“She’ll keep you warm, she curls up nice and tight.”

“Fuck, Izz, if I’d meant that I wanted to stay warm by crawlin’ in next to some livin’ breathin’ fuckin’ thing I would’ve just climbed in next to you.”

Then you pause, knowing how stupid that sounds. You can feel Izzy raising his fuckin’ eyebrows.

“Just take her,” he says after a while, settling her down on the ground. She stands, shaking like usual, but doesn’t run around. She’s calm and stands snorting, shaking and anxiously glancing around the hall. You can hear a little amusement in Izzy’s voice as he says, “you know where my room is if she doesn’t help.”

“Go to hell,” you tell him, arms wrapping round your stomach as you walk back to your bedroom. You hear tiny pads on the carpet as Ripley follows you. You climb into bed but she gets there first, curling up directly in the centre of the sheets. You end up smushed on the edge with 0.1% blanket coverage. 

After about an hour, Ripley’s fast asleep. It’s not that you don’t have the heart to move her ‘cause Jesus fuck, you’ve been trying, she’s just out cold. Half your body is exposed and you’re freezing, so you haul your ass out of bed and end up down at Izzy’s room for the second time. Ripley stays firmly asleep on your bed. Creaking Izzy’s door open, you see Treader stir slightly, but go back to sleep immediately. 

“Izz,” you hiss, “Izzy.”

He’s out cold too.  
You step further into the room.

“Izzy,” you say a little louder. You touch his shoulder, “Izz, wake up.”

He stays firmly asleep. Treader side eyes you but stays put.

“Izzy,” you repeat, shaking his shoulder. He slaps you off, still firmly asleep, and rolls over.

And then you decide fuck it, you’re cold, you’re tired and Izzy’s out for the count.   
You peel back the duvet and you climb in, resting on your stomach, and you sigh with relief at a nice, warm bed, regardless of the huge hulking dog at your feet and the unsuspecting hippie about five inches away from you. 

You drift off, lulled by the rain on the windows.

Until you’re crudely awoken by the bed creaking as Izzy turns in his sleep. Fine, whatever, you just drift off again.

Until you’re awoken again, this time by a hand being thrown over your shoulders. Uh, wait-

You can almost feel when the hand regains consciousness, even though you’re facing the other way. The hand almost slaps your head, and fingers its way through your hair. You feel violated.

Then you feel a shift behind you, yeah, he’s awake.

“A-“ he doesn’t know whether to say Axl or Annica. 

“Axl?” he guesses sleepily into the darkness. You grunt in response. 

“What the fuck are you doing in my bed?” his voice is scratchy, exhausted. 

You sigh. “Your damn dog wouldn’t move.”

“What?”

“Ripley,” you sit up, rubbing your face. “She wouldn’t fuckin’ move. Sat right in the middle of the bed.”

“Oh, Axl, fuck’s sake-“

“Hey,” you frown, “didn’t you tell me I knew where your room was?“

There’s radio silence on his end as he blearily blinks into the darkness, trying to make you out. You flop back down and pull the covers over yourself.

“Yeah, fine,” he sleepily says, and then opts to settle down himself.

And you both settle side by side, and somewhere in and out of consciousness you hear him mumble, “told you it was gonna rain.”

Motherfucker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> going to aim to post an update on here every 3 or so days until i catch up with myself if thats cool. These earlier chapters are like a year old so theyre getting heavily edited as i go- but thanks so much for the sweet reviews & kudos (kudoses? Kudose? Man idfk)


	3. Saturday Afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _”So what are we doing today?” You’d innocently asked at the same time as Izzy started sayin’, ”you sure you wanna stay ‘til Monday?” And the silence that followed was, believe me, stark._
> 
> On Saturday afternoon, Axl discovers Izzy can’t drive and Izzy discovers Axl can’t roll a cigarette.

You’re getting a strong sense of déjà vu right now.

Izzy’s in the store and you’re in the car, and you’re really thinkin’ about shit, while you got the time. He ain’t around so you’ve thrown your legs up onto his dashboard, and with one hand you roll a cigarette while the other turns down the radio. Bruce Springsteen lovingly describes how it’s _Saturday night and you’re all dressed up in blue,_ but in reality it’s Saturday afternoon and you’re dressed up in shit denim which, to be fair on him, is blue after all. It all feels very familiar. It all feels very, uh, like 1979. You cautiously keep an eye on Izzy’s silhouette in the store as you roll. 

He’s been a pain in the fuckin’ ass today.

“Mornin’,” was what you said to him when you slid into the kitchen.

No response from him, just a plate of burnt toast and grim lookin’ coffee was placed underneath your nose. 

“You, uh, tryna call me bitter or somethin’, Izz?” 

From the kitchen worktop, Izzy turned back to face you and cast you a look, a desperate look that sincerely pled with you to eat his ass. You caught what he threw out, but you opted to eat his toast instead.

He then sat opposite you on the dining table that, you’d noticed, had a thin layer of dust on it. He sat at it like he’s never sat at a fuckin’ table before, let alone his own fuckin’ table in his own fuckin’ house. You noted how he’d shift in discomfort. 

“You need a haemorrhoid pillow over there?” You antagonised him once more through a mouthful of toast, spitting crumbs in every direction. He looked repulsed.

“I’m good, thanks,” he narrowed his eyes. 

Sweet lord. You’d sipped on your shit coffee. He’d sipped on his own.

“You ain’t eating breakfast today?” You peered at him over your mug.

“Already ate.” He looked disinterested, flinging his eyes left, and then right, then up and down and all around.

“Okay.”

“Yeah.”

Then, in a performance of what seems only summarising of your visit so far, you both sat in silence. And you didn’t talk about the rain last night, and how Izzy’s gypsy weatherman streak was right about that.

And you didn’t talk about errands, or the charts, or the news.

And you didn’t talk about how you, in a fit of pettiness, decided to climb into Izzy’s bed just to be annoying, though you could see in his eyes that he fucking wanted to.

And you didn’t talk about how Izzy seemingly slept on the couch for a portion of the night either.

To be fair, you know, you’ll give him his dues, ‘cause you ain’t a great house guest, and you did, uh, turn up out of the blue. That’s a pretty big gesture. You rub your face; it’s hard to think about, really. So fucking embarrassing. As you recall this in present time, you lightly thump your head against the car window.

Remembering it all is... shit. It’s fucking shit. And when you both decided to actually talk to each other, it inadvertently stripped the conversation bare. 

”So what are we doing today?” You’d innocently asked at the same time as Izzy started sayin’, ”you sure you wanna stay ‘til Monday?” And the silence that followed was, believe me, stark.

Izz cleared his throat. “If you’re drivin’ back-“

“There was... talk of a plane ticket,” you trailed off sleepily as you rubbed your head, recalling one of several arguments you’d had over the phone with Doug, and one of two that you’d had with Slash. It wasn’t a lie, the thought of driving back didn’t and doesn’t necessarily appeal to you. _Drive to Chicago,_ Doug had said, _and we’ll pen you a flight from there._ You’d basically told him to eat shit, ‘cuz coming back ain’t really something you want to think about yet. 

“It’s all good,” you rubbed your nose and sat up. “So don’t worry. Monday fuckin’ morning, I’ll be out of your goddamn dreads an’ you’ll never have to think of me ever again.”

“Some fuckin’ luck,” he mused, smiling wistfully. You scowled and gestured viciously at him with your half eaten toast.

“For every sly fuckin’ comment like that, I’m stayin’ an extra day.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Look,” you said sincerely, and it _was_ sincere, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah?” He lazily responded, like he ain’t believe you. 

“This ain’t ideal for you an’ I don’t make good decisions,” you frowned, “so, sorry.”

Izzy set his mug down and seemingly started to relax; went through all five fuckin’ stages of grief, he threw his elbow over the back of the chair and looked you in the eye. 

“It don’t matter,” he shrugged. “You’re here now. Three days outta my life, ain’t no skin off my back, man.”

You were almost insulted by the level of nonchalance. Of course he doesn’t care, probably just liked seeing you squirm for a bit, payback for turnin’ up unannounced.

Jesus, fuck. A shit load of tension came crashing down around you there and then, smashing on the linoleum, banging into your ears, you almost flinched and you almost flinch remembering it because you can truly almost hear it, violent, physical, and Izzy with the psychic, all-seein’ streak sat through it all without even movin’ a muscle.

You blinked hard, shifted your eyes and took a sip of your coffee. Part of you wanted to start a fight; though that could very well just be the part of your personality that... always wants to fight.   
You suppress it. 

“Well,” you pursed your lips. “Thanks.”

Izzy gave you a cheeky smile. Probably the first genuine one of the trip.

Y’all didn’t speak much more after that, clear enough that both of you was wavin’ the white flag of surrender. He got up n’ got changed and you threw on some old thrift store shit and you both got in the car and you nearly threw up out of fear when Izzy reversed into his trash can and forced you to remember what a god awful fuckin’ driver he is.

“How you still got your license after all this fuckin’ time is beyond me,” you’d said to him later. He just chuckled. 

Drivin’ through Lafayette turns your stomach, partly ‘cause Izzy drives like fuckin’ Johnny 99, but also ‘cause every landmark you see reminds you of the raw spirits you’d chug. Jesus Christ, the hangovers this city has seen and suffered.

“I’m gonna get some gas, that cool?” 

You shrugged, grimacing stupidly and gesturing with your hands, “yeah, I don’t fuckin’ give a fuck, go for it.”

He pulled into an Exxon ‘cause he’s a flash motherfucker, and he filled it up while you went to look around the store. It‘s warm as fuck outside, still comin’ out of Indiana summer. 

Some fuckin’ teenager sat behind the counter and eyed you suspiciously, big beady peepers flickin’ from you to the music magazine he was readin’. Inconspicuous. You took a second to tie your hair back and shove it into the back of your jacket.

You’d walked up and down the aisles, tryin’ to shake his fuckin’ glare, and he looked like he was gonna come right in his pants. You’d had enough of it, eventually, and opened your mouth to say something, but as soon as you went to say ‘hey, kid,’ the entrance chimed and some other old dude walked in. You figured it better to leave it. Both you and the kid looked away.

You just decided to look at the magazines.   
You were on the sidebar of Kerrang; Cobain was on the cover. You felt a pang in your chest, that was a real fuckin’ shame. 27 ain’t no goddamn age. 

“The Eagles,” a voice came from beside you, and you nearly shat yourself. 

“What?” you turned. The old dude stood next to you, lookin’ at you. 

“The Eagles,” he repeated, gesturing to your chest. “Great band.”

You narrowed your eyes in sheer confusion ‘til you realised the shirt you were wearing was, in fact, an Eagles tour shirt. You’d bought it from a Goodwill a couple years ago, ‘cause the E was pretty much scratched off an’ you thought a shirt sayin’ _The agles_ was the funniest thing in the world. Turned out to be comfortable as fuck so you kept it.

“Oh,” you froze a little, then nodded and turned back to the magazines. “Yeah.”

“I went to that tour,” he continued. “1977, great show.”

“I’ll bet,” you’d gritted your teeth. A glance over your shoulder confirms that the kid’s resumed his regular programmin’, starin’ at you again.

“You don’t get music like that anymore,” The man shook his head and tapped the Kerrang cover. “I mean, what is this shit?”

You felt another pang in your chest for Cobain.

“It ain’t that bad,” you stuffed your hands in your pockets. “I met that guy a couple times.”

“Well, next time tell him his music sucks.” The dude laughed. At that point you were cursing Izzy in your head, how long does it take to fill up a fuckin’ tank?

“Wait,” the dude said, and a lightbulb may well have fuckin’ popped above his head. You followed his hand to see what the fuck he was talkin’ about, and he was pointin’ at the picture of you. His eyes went back and forth, and you sighed. Glancing behind you, you saw the kid was simply staring now, and the man was staring too.

You narrowed your eyes, what the fuck is this? You ran out of cigs this morning so you’re on a short fuse. And when you opened your mouth to say some shit, the door chimed and Izzy walked in. Of course: his gypsy intuition.

“Thank fuck,” you said out loud, and marched over to him.

“Full tank,” Izzy told the kid as he began to ring him up. Though the kid was eyeing Izzy up as well, more suspiciously though, as if he was trying to place him. And when Izzy, a dude who looks like a fucking hermit, whipped out his American Express, you think it clicked in the kid’s mind then that not only did he have Axl Rose in his store, he also had, uh, the other guy, what was his name?

“It ain’t polite to stare,” you found yourself sayin’, and the kid’s beady fuckin’ eyes nearly popped out of his skull.

“Oh, uh, fuck, I wasn’t-“

“It’s cool,” Izzy stared at his wallet as he popped his card back in. “Let’s go,” he nudged you and began to leave.

You followed him, and that’s when a meek voice behind you went, “I, uh, love your music.”

You and Izzy stopped and looked at each other, both of you flashin’ a look of aw, fuck. You then both craned your heads to look at the kid who had definitely just nut in his bluejeans and you both said in unison, “thanks.”

Izzy left and you went to follow, then remembered your fuckin’ cigs and groaned. _Meet you in a sec,_ you told Izzy, and turned to the kid and said, “one pack of marlboro gold, kid, please.”

The kid nodded solemnly, like he was about to undertake the mission he was put on the fuckin’ earth for, and searched and searched and searched, before freezing, “uh, we ain’t got no marlboro gold, sorry.”

You hissed. “What do you got?”

“Camels and Native Spirit,” he said.

“Call yourself a fuckin’ gas station?” you asked and the kid blinked, unsure of whether to answer. “Jus’- just give me some golden virginia and some papers.” 

Then you paid with a twenty, told him to keep the change and left. And you heard the old dude go _hey, who were those guys?_

“I feel sick,” you proclaimed as you got into the car, and Izzy burst out laughing.

“Hey, man, that never happens to me. You gotta cut your hair.”

You felt repulsed, “when hell freezes over, Izz.”

He glanced at your shirt and raised an eyebrow. “When hell freezes over,” he grinmed, and turned on the engine. 

That’s where you are now. Izzy pulled into a small market store, and you opted to stay in the car this time. He asked if you needed anythin’, you said yeah; whiskey.  
The driver’s window is all the way down, Springsteen’s still singin’, and you’re still rollin’ that dumbass cigarette. A breeze comes through and you sigh.

Lafayette is still a city, so the air ain’t as nice as it is on the outskirts but fuck, it’s nicer than LA and New York and Chicago and all the fuckin’ places you find yourself lately. You an’ Izz reconciling makes you kind of able to, maybe not relax, but, uh, chill out.

_And if you’re rough enough for love,_ you serenade Izzy as he opens the passenger door and all but throws his groceries in the back seat. _Honey, I’m tougher than the rest._

“Move your fuckin’ legs.”

“This is a pretty nice car, Izz.” And you ain’t lyin’, it’s a nice car, save for the fucking trashcan dent in the rear. 

“Thanks,” he starts the engine up, “couple more places to hit. They only had Jim Beam, by the way.”

“Fine by me. An’ thanks, I’ll pay you back.” Lowkey surprised he took your request seriously, you place your shitty cig in your mouth reach in your pocket for your lighter. Izzy, however, clears his throat.

You look at him on instinct. “What?”

He grimaces.

“Aw, fuck,” you deflate in your seat. “Izz, you’re out here hittin’ letterboxes and trashcans and pedestrians left n’ right, but you ain’t gonna let me smoke in the car?”

“Ax, you’ll make it smell of fuckin’ cigs,” he lifts a finger off the wheel to gesture. “And I ain’t care about that, but it’s gonna make me fuckin’ want one, so do me a favour please.”

“A’ight, a’ight,” you smirk, pulling your cig out of your mouth and and sticking your lighter into your top pocket. “You wouldn’t want any o’ this shit anyway. 

“Thanks,” he says dryly, and pulls out of the lot. 

You take a sharp intake of breath and roll down your window. “Anytime,” you murmur.

“You hungry?”

You glance over at him. “Nah, still full from your vegetables and your burnt toast.” 

“You don’t like it, you can stay somewhere with room service.” He tells you. He’s got a point. 

“Funny,” you stroke his ego. “Yeah, I could eat.”

“We’ll grab something.”

“Izz, I’ve never been more sincere in my life, can we make it somethin’ fuckin’ fat and greasy?”

“Good shout,” he side eyes you. You cheer subconsciously. You are, on all levels except physical, a kid whose mom is about to pull into the McDonald’s drive thru. 

When Izzy pulls into the empty parking lot of a diner just on the outside of town, you sprint out the car and light up the cigarette in your pocket.

“Jesus, Axl,” Izzy calls after you, squinting against the sun. 

“Hey, man, I can live without a cigarette,” you call back, turning round to face him, “just can’t get outta that car an’ away from your drivin’ fuckin’ fast enough.”

Izzy flashes a spiteful smile as he opens the door. “Ladies first,” he deadpans.

“Fuck you,” you say, but you march inside anyway. 

You puff on your cig against the air con of the diner, ‘cause it’s 1994 and you can still smoke indoors. The door still chimes as Izzy follows you in.

It’s really fucking bleak.

You know this diner, been here years, opened just before you left. Izz swans past you and grabs a booth; you slide in opposite him and ash your cig in the metal alloy ashtray. You scan the menu as the waitress serves you both coffee, decaf for Izzy, then you stub out your cig and grab your shit from your pockets to roll another one. 

“Man, your lungs must be fuckin’ black.” He teases solemnly, and you glance up at him. 

“You kiddin’?” You ask him. 

He raises his eyebrows.

“You gotta be kiddin’.” You shake your head. 

He cracks a smile.   
The cheek of this fuckin’ motherfucker.

“Okay, nah, let’s look at the fuckin facts,” you set down your gear and take a clumsy sip of coffee, preparing to set him straight. “I started smokin’ when I was, like, sixteen or somethin’, right? And you started smoking at fuckin’, what, twelve?”

“I wasn’t fuckin’ twelve-”

“Well, for argument’s sake, you weren’t far fuckin’ off,” you give him a half assed gesture, “so between sixteen and thirty, I’ve smoked maybe, what, ten a day, maximum?”

“That’s pretty fuckin’ bad, Axl-”

“Shut the fuck up,” you point at him sternly. He looks at you almost emotionless, but his eyes are entertained. “I went through ten cigs a day, at max, when you went through ten packs a week, at _minimum_. Call it twenty four in a pack-”

“Fuckin’- I ain’t ever smoked that much in my life-”

“The jury’s still decidin’, Isbell,” you sneer at him. The waitress comes to take your order while you’re mid-sentence and you shut up on instinct but he holds up his hand before she speaks, signalling you to carry on. He’s enjoyin’ this; what are you, some kinda fuckin’ sideshow act? 

The waitress leaves you alone, lest she hang on to your every word before she gets to euphorically take your order. You side eye her as she walks away and clear your throat to carry on. 

“So, anyway, you packed it in what, two years ago? And I’m still on less than you fuckin’ were for fifteen years straight. It ain’t my lungs that are fuckin’ black.”

Izzy tries to hide a grin. “So,” he stirs his coffee, “has the jury reached a verdict?”

“Yeah, they sentence you to suck my dick and balls.”

Izzy throws his head back and laughs.

“Does the defence have anything to say?” You sip on your coffee.

“Yeah, I ain’t never smoked anywhere near twenty thousand cigs, your honour.” He sips his own, still smilin’. He glances at you, eyes twinklin’, “You know after a year of not smokin’, the risk of heart disease cuts in half?”

“Cool,” you pick up your half rolled cig and finish it off, spilling tobacco everywhere. You grow incredibly self-conscious. 

Izzy sighs sharply. “Give it here.”

“I can manage,” you snap.

You can’t see it but you feel him roll his eyes, and his hands snake over yours and gently take the cigarette from you. Less of a cigarette, really, more of a ’rette. Izzy’s fingers are block fuckin’ cold, and it’s seventy eight degrees outside. You thought you grew up but them fuckin’ hands still make your blood flow a bit harder. 

He pinches the sides and holds the filter in place, reaches over for some more tobacco outta your pack, licks it quick and gentle like an old fuckin’ pro because, well, that’s what he is.

You watch anxiously as he rolls it thin and perfect, then he reaches out for a fork from the box of cutlery on the table and shoves one of the tines inside it, pushing the tobacco down.

He pulls over the ashtray, takes your lighter and lights up. You watch as the tip of the empty paper burns off and curls into the alloy. He takes it out his mouth without dragging on it and then hands it to you. 

“Don’t know why you stopped,” you puff on it. The tobacco is so thick and condensed that it tightens your throat. The filter is already wet. “You’re a fuckin’ natural.”

“I used to roll my mama’s,” he shakes his head, holding his mug with two hands. “When I was like, seven. Doomed from the beginnin’.”

“Hey, why not grow some tobacco in that huge fuckin’ garden of yours?” You inspect Izzy’s handiwork. “I’ll buy my cigs straight from you. Save me some cash.”

Izzy chuckles as the waitress appears.

“Y’all ready to order now?” She hates her job. You relax somewhat, ‘cause she ain’t young enough to know who you are and frankly you don’t even think she’ll give a fuck if she did know.

“Uh,” you pick up the menu that you ain’t looked at. “I’ll have a number five with, uh, bacon, please, doll.”

She blinks at you, the slowest blink you’ve ever seen. You’re about to ask if somethin’s wrong when she scribbles in her notepad and turns to Izzy.

“What about you?”

He looks at her, then to the menu, then back to her and to the menu again. She coughs, and you don’t know if she’s coughin’ to remind Izz that she’s still there or to tell you subtly to put your cig out. 

He breathes in sharply, then hands her the menu. “Number twelve and a glass of water.” He smiles curtly.

She takes the menu and swipes yours off the table, then leaves.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” he murmurs into his coffee.

You snort. “I’d love to see you do her job.”

“Since when did Axl Rose become a champion of the workin’ people?” 

You half ass a smile. “Since when did Izzy Stradlin become a middle aged man?”

He gives you a dirty smile. “My fuckin’ twenties aged me fast.”

You both sit in a contented silence for a couple minutes, sipping your respective coffee.

“Hey,” you start up again, and Izzy looks at you.

“Hm?”

“Can I try that?”

He blinks at you. “Try what?”

“The coffee,” you nod towards it. “Wanna see if it tastes any different.”

Izzy’s lips twitch, unsure if you’re fuckin’ with him.

“I’m bein’ serious,” you tell him.

He shrugs and pushes it towards you.

“You can finish it,” he says.

You drink it all and sure enough, there is very little difference.

“Crazy,” you tell him, giving the mug back.

“Yeah,” he nods, chuckling incredulously.

“Remind me why you don’t drink regular?”

He frowns, then shrugs. “Drank too much of it when I came off cigs, can’t take the rush anymore, just a personal thing. Guess if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”

Then your food comes, and your stomach nearly cries out of happiness. Real fuckin’ food. You ordered a plate of pancakes with bacon, stacked high and coated with blueberries and maple syrup. Izzy gets a plate of scrambled egg on toast, with jalapeños. You both shut up as you eat and the silence is as good as the food. 

Halfway through, when you’re both slowin’ down, a different waitress, younger and happier, comes prepared to fill up your coffee. Almost definitely her first day, she has one pot, and she smiles sweetly as she fills up your cup. You wink at her and she giggles.

Then she goes to fill up Izzy’s cup and he ain’t payin’ attention as his hand tightens around the handle. For some reason, your fight or flight kicks in; your hand snaps over the rim and you snatch it away from both of them. The waitress almost spills the coffee out of fright and gasps as she pulls her arm back, wondering if she did somethin’ wrong. Izzy glances up, eyes scannin’ over you and the cup and the mortified girl. 

“What just fuckin’ happened?” He asks you, lookin’ at you like you’re some fuckin’ freak.

“It wasn’t decaf,” you find yourself sayin’.


	4. Saturday Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You got one horrible fuckin’ habit,” Izzy begins, spitting his words out, “of bringin’ out the worst in people.”_
> 
> On Saturday night, Axl gets Izzy drunk and regrets it immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait but I'll be caught up here within the next couple weeks hopefully. thanks to everyone being so nice in the comments!

You paid for lunch, to thank Izzy for that snide bottle of whiskey. You left the first waitress, comrade of the kitchen, a pretty hefty tip. She didn’t smile when she saw it but she did give you a nod. Izzy gave the second waitress, queen of the fairies, a sly tip as you left. Payin’ her off to compensate for your freakish outburst that even now, well into the evening, you muse over.

You ain’t did much else after that. More errands and then straight home. You’re sat smokin’ on Izzy’s porch again, though you’re curled on the porch swing as the sun sets on full power, flickin’ through a magazine you grabbed out of Izzy’s grocery bags. You don’t know what Izzy’s doin’ buyin’ Better Homes & Gardens but it does kinda soothe a fetish for beautiful kitchens that you never knew you had ‘til now.

Ripley sits at your feet, nibblin’ at your socks. You don’t mind so much but every once in a while she plain fuckin’ bites you and you yell out loudly. 

Treader sits sleepily on the porch steps. You smoke another cigarette that Izzy rolled for you and speak of the devil, he lingers in the doorway.

“Bonsoir,” he stretches.

“Bonsai,” you nod knowingly. “What’s for dinner?”

“Thai green curry.”

“Smells awful.” You halfheartedly tease him, turning a page.

“Stay out here with the dogs n’ eat your own shit then, I don’t give a fuck,” he shrugs, but he’s got a fat fuckin’ goofy grin on his face. You chuckle under your breath. “Nice night though,” he says.

“Don’t even think about tellin’ me it’s gonna rain,” you point lazily at him with your cig while you flick through the magazine. 

He shakes his head. “I won’t jinx it,” he steps out onto the patio, hands shoved in his pockets. He casts you a side glance. “Didn’t know you were so invested in Better Homes & Gardens.”

“Well, maybe I’m wantin’ a better home and garden,” you glance up at him and puff on the cigarette.

He nods, looks away, concedes. “I’ll bet.”

“What you doin’ buyin’ this shit anyway?”

“Annica likes ‘em,” he says wistfully. Every time he says her name it just grounds you in reality.

It’s your turn to concede. “I’ll bet,” you say under your breath. “When’s she back again?”

“The first.” He stares out across his lawn and the fields and trees beyond it. Evening breeze blows wisps of his hair out. You hate that after all this time, you notice things like that.

“You two okay?” You find yourself sayin’. Izzy turns to face you and you wanna just bury yourself into the magazine, but you face up to what you just said. You look at him softly.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” He ain’t sad or angry. You shrug.

“Steph used to, uh, visit family a lot too.”

“Well, Annica ain’t Steph,” Izzy moves to sit on the swing with you, picking Ripley up by the belly and all but flingin’ her down. Ain’t a fuckin’ scratch on her. Indestructible. 

“Sure hope you treat her better than you treat her dog.”

“That dog’s made of fuckin’ hard rubber,” Izzy coats you off. “Anyway, me and Annica are fine, don’t worry about it.”

You nod sincerely.

“I’m gonna check on dinner,” he says after a while. “Come on in when you’re ready.”

You nod and he heads back inside. Treader hoists himself up and trails after him. Ripley gets bored and follows suit.

Left alone, you look around. The temperature is dropping slowly as the sun sets ahead of you. You throw the magazine down on the swing and stand up, putting the cig out on the patio scaffold. You lean against the railing for a sec, seein’ orange trees rustle, catchin’ the golden of the wheat and corn and grass. You wrap your arms round yourself and dart around the back of the house on the wraparound patio. Izzy’s garden is unkempt but not abandoned. He just likes leavin’ things to grow naturally. You ain’t really got a garden, mostly driveway. 

Eyein’ over the dandelions and the long grass and the weeds in the patio cracks, you slip in through the back door.

“Hey,” you call as you walk into the kitchen.

“What’s up,” he calls back, draining his rice tentatively.

“I might, uh, have some of that whiskey later,” you fold your arms and lean in the doorway. “You wanna join me?”

He looks at you briefly as he dishes up. “I’ll probably pass.”

“Probably?” You shove your hands in the pockets of your sweats and traipse round the kitchen, inspecting his cooking. He nudges you out the way as he spoons curry into the dishes.

“I’ll pass,” he corrects himself instinctively.

“Cool,” the food smells pretty good to be honest, but the entire city of Lafayette smells of cornflower and cow shit and Izzy’s house reeks of patchouli and sage so there’s not a shit load of competition. 

Izzy dumps the pan into the sink, thrusts a bowl of curry into your hands, and heads into the living room with his food.

You settle on the small loveseat diagonal to the couch, where Izzy is once more nestles into the corner, eating like he ain’t never been fed in his life. You tentatively spoon it into your mouth. It’s pretty good, but goddamn, if you don’t trust Izzy’s fuckin’ cooking-

“I ain’t poisoned it, goddamn.” He’s laughing at you.

“Where’d you learn to cook?” You ask him. He snorts.

“You want my credentials?” 

“I ain’t sayin’ you can’t cook but I once watched you dip a croissant in Burger King ketchup and call it a French pizza.”

“Yeah, in my defence though,” he side eyes you, “I was on a lot of drugs.”

Then, similar to the night before, you eat your food in silence and watch the TV. The X Files plays steadily in front of you.

You, like the night before, eat it all. You offer to do the dishes but he tells you no, just leave ‘em in the sink, I’ll do ‘em later, and you know, maybe he will but you don’t believe him, and you kinda owe him for all this anyway. You wash the dishes, but you leave them for him to dry. 

In the kitchen, you spot the peculiar brown paper bag, and you fish out two glasses from the cupboard.

When you walk back into the living room, Izzy glances over on instinct, and when he sees the two glasses he looks sick to his stomach.

“Come on,” you hold out the glass.

He stares at you. “Axl, I’m gonna tell you somethin’ about your character.”

“My character?” You raise your eyebrows, signallin’ for him to keep talking.

“You got one horrible fuckin’ habit,” he begins, spitting his words out, “of bringin’ out the worst in people.”

“If you’re one of these people,” you narrow your eyes, “then you got one horrible fuckin’ habit of lettin’ me.”

Now you an’ Izzy ain’t got no animosity between you, or at least you didn’t think you did. Though, similar to you, for every fuckin’ good personality trait, he’s got two bad ones. Though, dissimilar to you, his bad traits are your good ones and vice versa.

And, you know, those types of differences between you and Izz have always been there. You remember before you guys really got to know each other, and he’d sit on the right side of church in the second to last row while you sat on the left at the front. You’d kneel forward and pray, knowing who to pray to and what to pray for, and he’d kneel with everyone else as they bowed their heads but he’d always kind of look around bored; when he saw you, the front row kid, sit back after you’d finished praying, he’d copy you and sit back as well ‘cause you seemed to know what you were doin’. Then he’d hang around outside with his brothers and some kids from school as his mama drank her coffee and chatted to her friends, while you’d help your own mama put the wine away and collect hymn books. You were what, fourteen? When your hair was getting a little too long for your dad’s taste and you were refusin’ to sing like you used to. When you’d catch the airhead kid with the shaggy hair from church in the corridor with his friends between classes and fucking hell, wanted to be him so bad.

What the fuck was his name again?  
It was something fucking stupid. Teachers read his name out as Jeff fucking Isbell, but you and everyone else called him-

“Izzy,” your eyes glint as you address him. 

He looks up at you sheepishly.

When you really got to know him, you realised he ain’t as cool as you thought.

“You gonna drink it or what?” you say callously. 

He stares expressionless, though you can see the cogs turnin’ behind his eyes. You know how manipulative you can be; does that make what you’re about to do any easier?

“A fuckin’ glass of whiskey ain’t gonna make you go runnin’ for a pound o’ china white,” you glance down at him, assuming the voice of authority. You don’t wanna get drunk alone; is that a crime?

“Fuck you, Axl,” his face snaps to life. Like a bacterium invading his immune system, your argument is snapped up and shut down almost as quick as you threw it out.

“Fuck yourself,” you shoot back, and you hand him the glass. He takes it from you, and you stare at him ‘til he takes a sip. He’s infected. You slam down next to him.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” he groans. “This shit tastes like every hangover I ever had.”

You chuckle. Izzy had woke up in the mornin’, on more than one occasion, with his lips and nostrils stained brown after a heavy drinkin’ night. Used to drink whiskey out the bottle, knock shots back like a hero. Then there’d be days where he’d spit out brown saliva for days, and he had enough of it one day and switched to red wine.

He flicks through the channels, looking bored as he sips the whiskey. Small, tentative sips, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth so it goes down easier.

He settles it down on the coffee table. In a way, you’re so fuckin’ relieved that he can handle it. Maybe he’s just humourin’ you. You feel better than you did before.

He sticks some fuckin’ movie on, thus commences the back and forth - ‘Robocop,’ ‘Terminator,’ ‘If it’s Terminator you can turn it the fuck off, Izz.’ - and both glasses of whiskey go down a lot quicker than anticipated. When it is revealed seconds later that the movie is in fact Terminator, you force Izzy to change the channel.

“Man, ain’t fuckin’ nothin’ on.” He complains.

“So turn it off,” you shrug. “And we’ll bust out the fuckin’ Monopoly or some shit- oh, obviously I’m fuckin’ jokin’,” you hiss, when he pulls a horrified face. “You know, we could always have a fuckin’ conversation.”

To your chagrin, Izzy begins flicking through the channels at a much faster pace. You go to grab the remote but he pulls back, and you both end up in a childish fight determining whether or not you’ll actually have to talk to each other. Of course, Izzy weighs about as much as a bunch of plantains so you come out victorious.

You turn the TV off, and then you’re acutely aware of the deafening silence in the house.

“Alright,” Izzy nods, “what now?”

You both sit there for a few seconds more.

“I’m gonna put some music on,” you declare, standing up.

He lets out a low whistle and declares independence for his pretty couple acres, “so, the Democratic Republic of Izzy’s Living Room, huh?”

You glare at him ‘til he’s learnt his lesson, then you flick through his records. In the corner of your eye, you see him slouch into the arm of the couch and sip the whiskey sweetly. He doesn’t stop looking at you once.

His records are a very interesting mash of, uh, everything. You come across ELO, Misfits, Donovan-

“Happy Together,” you pull a sleeve out, “60 of the Greatest Songs of Love and Happiness from the 50’s and 60’s.” You whirl around, and shake the record in the air, silently gesturing for an answer. Izzy just clicks his tongue.

“It was my mom’s,” he says dryly.

“Well, I got you, babe,” you muse through gritted teeth, checking out the track listing. “Okay, no, there’s some tunes here-“

“Put it on,” Izzy softly demands.

You blow air out through your noise in a half laugh kind of deal, and you say to yourself fuck it, sure. You do as you’re told.

“This is pretty recent,” you say, inspecting the cover art as Be My Baby plays softly in the background. “I thought your mom-“

“Nah,” Izzy shuts down that conversation pretty quick, sluggishly rubbing his head, slouching further into the couch. “I dunno, I think Kev got it for her, or his wife or somethin’, I dunno. She liked listenin’ to it, still does, just, uh...” He looks you dead in the eye. “You know how it is.”

You crack a smile. “You goin’ round stealin’ records from helpless old ladies? Am I gonna have to put out an APB on you?”

Izzy looks at you like you’re stupid, but he snorts and covers his eyes with his hand. Lookin’ like he’s succumbing to the elements, like your own mama when she had a migraine. He ain’t drunk, god, not yet but he’s smilin’ a little too much. You worm your way in between the fireplace and the coffee table, back to your seat, climbing over Izzy’s legs where he’s thrown himself dramatically over the couch. 

“Izz, can you move your fuckin’ legs by chance,” you say sourly, nudging him with your knee. On instinct he nudges you back; he lifts his hand off his face and stares at your legs. You feel like you’re entertainin’ a fuckin’ idiot.

He pulls his legs up, still smiling, and reaches for his glass as you sit down.

“So what have you been up to since I saw you last?” He says, weirdly professionally, sipping on his whiskey.

“You mean in between puttin’ this record on and sittin’ down?”

“Sharpenin’ that wit of yours, I see.”

You smile spitefully. “I ain’t been doin’ much. Been tourin’, recordin’-“

“Recordin’?” Izzy’s head snaps up and his face softens. “New album?”

“No,” you shake your head, “not yet. Just, uh, workin’ on some stuff, I guess.”

He turns his body to face you. “You’re writin’ again?” God, he’s too fuckin’ interested for his own good.

“No,” you frown. “Not really, I told you, it’s just some stuff. I don’t wanna talk about it.” 

He seems surprised at how closed off you got so quick. Fucker’s gettin’ a taste of his own medicine.

“Fine by me,” he shrugs. 

“What about you, you been writin’?”

“Sure,” he shrugs. “Never really stop.”

“Your album was good,” you say, avoiding his eyes, swallowing the whiskey. It goes down the wrong way, and tears prick your eyes as you try not to cough.

“You said that last time you saw me,” Izzy said matter of factly, “and the fuckin’ time before that.”

“Well, it was a good fuckin’ album,” you choke out.

“Glad you think so,” he swirls his whiskey. “Your last one was a bit weird.” Emphasis on your.

You put a pause on dying to look him straight in the eye. “What the fuck do you mean, weird?”

He shrugs, killing the conversation. “Any idea what you’re gonna do with your time off?”

“What time off?” 

He looks at you. “After the tour or whatever. Or before, I don’t know. What’s the deal now?”

“Izzy, you don’t wanna know the shit I blew off to even come down here,” you frown. Business meetings, upon meetings, upon meetings…

“You’re right, I don’t,” he says, “so what are you gonna do with your completely hypothetical time off?”

You pull your cigs out of your pocket; his nose scrunches as you light up. “You know, I ain’t thought about it,” you muse, “ain’t that sad? I mean, there’s shit I’d like to do- I get jealous of you, man.”

He laughs, “oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” you take a drag, “man, you just get off when you need to and come back when you want. That’s the life. I feel like I always got someone tryna schedule mine.”

“Ain’t that what you hire them for?”

“Good point,” you shrug. “I guess I…”

You drift off, thinkin’ about a dream from long ago. “Don’t laugh,” you tell him, “but you know, I always wanted to drive, uh, Route ‘66.”

Izzy bursts out laughing.

“Fuck you,” your face sours.

He keeps laughing, a big ol’ unstoppable grin spreadin’ on his face. “That’s so fuckin’ funny. What, you wanna pull a Thelma an’ Louise?”

“Key word bein’ wanted, Izzy, ‘cause after drivin’ three days to see your skinny ass I don’t feel much like road trippin’ as I do touchin’ a steerin’ wheel ever again in my life.”

“It ain’t on the maps no more,” he shakes his head, “you’d die out there.”

“Maybe,” you shrug. “How many roads out there like that though, with nobody fuckin’ on ‘em? Shit, I’d take that Allante an’ a fuckin’ mixtape-”

You scowl as Izzy cuts you off with ferocious laughter. “Fuck you then, I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout this no more.”

“No, no, come on,” Izzy grins, shiftin’ his weight and gettin’ a little closer. “Tell me ‘bout your little fuckin’ American Dream.”

You frown and fold your arms. Those sips of dollar store liquor are dancin’ behind his eyes.

You sigh, giving him the benefit, and you open your mouth just as he says, “you of-mice-and-men ass motherfucker.”

“Go to hell,” you shut the conversation down. He’s still laughing and dissolves into helpless giggles. Bobby Darin’s Dream Lover plays in the background. You hunt around for a makeshift ashtray and stub out your cig in the same vase as yesterday. 

“No, you should do that,” he smiles warmly. “I did somethin’ like that a while ago. Do it, open your third eye.”

You snort. “Don’t think my depth perception could stand it.”

“You still wear glasses?” He says all of a sudden, with gusto, like he’s just remembered. You frown.

“Contact lenses,” you tell him wearily. Your secret shame, goddamn.

“Huh. That’s a shame.”

“You think?” You find yourself blinking. He shrugs.

“Well, I don’t know,” he looks whimsically off into the distance. “You coulda been a... poster boy for makin’ glasses cool again, or some shit. Bagged a nice little sponsorship with an optometrist.”

You snort. He just shakes his head and shrugs. “Guess I always thought you suited ‘em.”

“Well, then you were the only one,” you sip your whiskey sourly, subconsciously bypassing any attempt by him to compliment you. The record keeps spinnin’. “Mm,” you hum through a mouthful, “I love this song.”

“What is it? I can’t make it out.”

“Cry to Me,” you flutter your eyes closed. “Solomon Burke.” You find yourself humming along contentedly.

“Shit, my grandma loved this song.” Izzy muses, still sipping on a precariously almost empty glass. 

“Christ, Izz, your grandma loved every fuckin’ song on the planet.” You open your eyes, narrowin’ ‘em, somewhat annoyed at Izzy’s inclination to pull you out of your Happy Together fantasy. 

“For sure,” he snorts. “Hey, man, don’t let me interrupt you.”

You flush around the ears, fuckin’ Izzy, what are you, some kinda dancin’ monkey? However, you sink into your seat. “Nothin’ can be sadder than a glass of wine,” you soothe, settling your hands behind your head and shutting your eyes, throwing one leg over the other. “Loneliness, loneliness...” ...Such a waste of time. You sing softly to the stereo. Izzy stays quiet, though with your eyes shut you can hear him topping up both your glasses.

“Don’t you feel like cryin’?” He sings softly along with you. You crack open your eyes. “Don’t you feel like cryin’?” You ask him.

You catch him lookin’ at you. You shut your eyes again and sing away, not stoppin’ til the song fades out. You open your eyes when Izzy places his hand on your arm drunkenly, and you feel a whiskey induced shock, a feeling of southern comfort shared between you. You sit yourself up and shake your head, sending him a telepathic message apologising for your random outburst of song.

You recognise, by how close his fading giggles sound now compared to before, that he’s moving closer to you independent from his brain, compelled by natural instinct and he hovers, like he feels he’s got some claim on the territory. 

Hey, Izzy. We ain’t sixteen no more. 

“You know you always had a beautiful set of pipes on you.” He says in a darkened way. You double take and he freezes over, ‘cause he’s Izzy and that’s what he does, and he takes his hand off your arm and moves away, reaching for his glass of water from earlier and sipping it tentatively. You freeze over too and you wonder if you said somethin’ out loud. 

Neither of you are looking at each other. You’re both starin’ straight ahead. “Huh,” you say. “You think so?”

“You lookin’ to be told you got a good voice?” He lazily turns his head towards you. “Well, shit, yeah. You ever thought of joinin’ a band?”

“You’re on the ball tonight,” you dryly stroke his ego. “Ain’t seen you this funny since ‘86.” 

He smirks into his glass, lookin’ like he wants to hide in it. 

“I aim to please, I guess.”

“When the fuck have you ever aimed to please,” you snort and he cracks a grin, relaxing his grip on the glass. 

“Well, rehab makes you stupidly empathetic,” he laments, “figured you’d know.”

“To be fair, we went to two very different types of rehab.”

He’s still smilin’. Some dumb fuckin’ songs keep playing. You decide, set to a soundtrack of Neil Sedaka that you enjoy seein’ him smile. He ain’t never fuckin’ do enough of it. You used to be the only person who could make him laugh like that when you were kids. 

You ain’t realise how much you’re starin’ til his grin disappears. “What?” he says with a hint of self consciousness.

You shake your head smiling, “ain’t nothin’.”

He don’t smile back, and you feel awkward almost. Then you almost physically feel a chill as Izzy clears his throat and freezes over again. An Izzy speciality.

“You ain’t changed a fuckin’ bit,” you find yourself saying. You mean it endearingly so but the words fall out of your mouth accusingly.

“Hm?” He glances towards you softly, drunkenly, innocently.

“Why you think you gotta haul a wall up around me, I don’t fuckin’ know.” Your voice is soft. Izzy stops right where he is, like someone’s pressed pause ‘cuz they can’t stand to see what comes next. 

Then he half laughs awkwardly and settles back into his seat. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” 

You knock the rest of your whiskey back and shake your head. It ain’t the time or the place. Leave it, Axl. You’re in his house. 

“No,” he shifts to face you, “No, I wanna know what you mean.”

You shrug, “I’ve been drinkin’. I dunno what the fuck I mean. I’ll probably head up soon.”

“Haul a wall up,” he repeats, scoffing into his glass.

“Drop it, Izz, I’m jus’ talkin’ shit,” you begin to stand up.

“Yeah, what’s new,” he says quietly.

You frown. “I touched a nerve or somethin’? Four words or less?”

He narrows his eyes. You shift under his glare. He’s startin’ to piss you off. 

Leave it, Axl. Just leave it well fuckin’ alone.

But somethin’ tells you he wants to pick a fight. You ain’t got his mama’s gypsy intuition but you know him and you know what he’s like.

“Seriously. Izzy. I ain’t mean nothin’ by it,” you shake your head. 

“I know,” he shrugs.

He ain’t makin’ it easy. “Are you doin’ this on purpose?”

He turns to you, clearly annoyed. “Doin’ what?”

“Why do I feel like I’m talkin’ to you from five fuckin’ years ago?” You snap. “Brick fuckin’ wall.”

He stares at you, and then he laughs incredulously. You feel very self conscious all of a sudden. You should’ve just gone the fuck to bed, I fuckin’ told you so.

He opens his mouth and you gesture with your hand, cutting him off. “Don’t, Izzy.”

“Haul a wall up,” he repeats, softer, quieter, “you think I got shit to hide? Axl, you don’t know me like that no more.”

“Christ, this has really pissed you off,” you murmur into your glass, looking away.

“Don’t flatter yourself, man, I’m the only motherfucker on the planet immune to your bullshit.”

He calls it immune, you call it asymptomatic, ‘cause Izzy is way too vocal and emotional for someone who don’t give a fuck like he says. It was a sly comment. Look where that shit gets you.

Sometimes you feel no matter how hard you try, someone’s always waitin’ for you to fuck things up again. Then again, who said you deserve second chances?

“You ain’t changed neither,” Izzy pipes up again bitterly like he can read your damn mind, confident he’s got a winning case with Jim Beam in the witness stand. 

You watch him swirl the booze in his glass. “Whatever you say, man.” You try to remember your anger management classes.

“Still just a fuckin’ fucked up kid.” But he’s insistent on pokin’ the bear. 

“Once a junkie, always a junkie, Izzy.” You fire a warning shot– when have you ever been afraid to aim low? And you know Izzy, so you know there’s much lower to aim. 

“You always fuckin’-“ He groans and runs a hand through his hair. “You always throw that in my face but I ain’t never did nothin’ to you, I’m sayin’ that now.”

“Hey, you notice how quick you went for that booze, Izz?”

“This is what I was talkin’ about,” he spits his words out, raisin’ his voice. “You goddamn- you always twist shit just to how it suits you. You’ll build a fuckin’ house and knock it down to prove a point.”

“As far as my fuckin’ memory serves me, Izzy, you started this, what the fuck is going on?”

He clenches his jaw, ready to explode, then he realises he’s letting you get to him. It’s always the same pattern. You know it so well. He relaxes and looks away, shaking his head and folding his arms. 

Yeah, he’s drunk, and he never was pleasant to be around when he was drunk. 

“You ain’t never shoulda been famous.” For whatever it’s worth, he looks disgusted. “Lethal mix. Give an unstable hick kid some fuckin’ cash and he thinks he can say an’ do anything he wants.”

It’s as easy as steppin’ on a twig. Something in you just snaps. “But see, here’s the thing Izzy, I fucking can. Anything. Anyone,” you tell him, intoxicated but sincere. “Whatever I want.”

“What the fuck did I do to you?” He laughs, “created a fuckin’ monster. Get out of here with that clown shit. You’re the same fucked up kid I’ve always fuckin’ known.”

“Fuck you,” you raise your voice, “created? Fuckin’ created? Your signature ain’t nowhere on me, Izzy.”

He snorted. “Yeah, that’s right, fuckin’ created. And I did. You think you’d be where you are if it wasn’t for me? Mr fuckin’ I Can Do Anyone I Want, no you damn can’t.”

“How come we always end up fightin’ like this?” You shout, trying one last desperate attempt to reign it in but you said what you said and he’s got more to come. “I ain’t come here to fuckin’ fight you.”

He shakes his head; you stare him down and he grows sour under your gaze. “I get it,” you tell him, and he raises his eyebrows. “I get it,” you slur again. “You fucked it, Izz. You tapped out, that’s cool, an’ if signing yourself on to me is what it takes to make you feel better then by all means.” Izzy grows even more sour as you finish your sentence. “But I can have anyone I want and you can’t. ‘Cause nobody gives a fuck about you, Izzy, and nobody ever gave a fuck except me. If you had any hand in creatin’ me,” you pause to sneer, “they’d sure as fuck know about it.”

“Fuck yourself!” Izzy shouts, almost instantly. 

“I don’t care, Izz. I’m not scared. ‘Cause I’ll need double the amount of hands to count the people who’d bend over backwards for me and you’re one of them. Man, I fucked you over so many times and you still let me in your house.”

Izzy’s mouth is slightly open. You’ve cornered him, and he’s shocked that you have. He purses his lips. The record still plays softly in the background, The Beatles this time, it’s not the way you smile that touched my heart–

You know the shit you’re saying is real bad. You don’t even believe half of it. Jesus fucking Christ, Jesus Christ, what are you saying, Axl?

“How about you leave then?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Damn right I fuckin’ do.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“You do.”

“I don’t- fuck off.”

Your drunken laughter rings out through the house as Izzy visibly scowls. He’s really not happy and you’ve cut deep but he’s spent so long playin’ the goddamn victim that it’s time he heard the truth, even as a result of a drunken bravado. You finish your third glass of whiskey. Izzy begins to spout more bullshit as you stand up but the room spins and you tune him out. 

It’s something bitter, because his eyes are hard and his jaw is stiff. But you don’t hear him because you march over and in one two three four steps you’re in front of him. You’re drunk. You don’t know why you’re doing it. He kept talking, he didn’t learn his lesson. You throw your knee down in between his thighs and viciously push upwards. His hands hit out in defence but you take him solemnly by the jaw, throw your other leg parallel and lick a long and slow stripe over his chin, his mouth, his cheek.

Then you remove yourself and take Izzy’s untouched half glass from the table and sip on it. As you detach Izzy’s face follows yours, almost instinctively, and he looks at you fuckin’ furiously as you point at him, excusing yourself.

“Anything I fuckin’ want, Izzy.”

Then you take his whiskey to bed with you and drink it on the way. 

It wasn’t meant to be sexy or flirty. It was meant to be dominating. It was meant to be weird. It was meant to scare him. That’s what you think anyway, that’s what you’re tellin’ yourself. And you can tell it left a mark by the way he storms after you, pounding up the stairs and grabbing you by the shirt. He slams you against the wall and in a drunken haze you misplace your step; if he hadn’t had you pinned, you’d’ve fallen all the way down.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he explodes, dangerously close to your face. He smells of whiskey. 

“Answer me,” he’s furious.

You avoid his eyes. You try to.  
But he follows your gaze threateningly, inches away, and you feel claustrophobic.

The record’s still playing: baby, it’s you. 

“Axl.”

Then you look at him. You’re on his face, and you can’t tell if it’ll soften or not. Eyes are the windows to the soul, yes, of course, and Izzy with the supposed psychic streak knows how to look you in the eye and push your buttons, to break your walls, to watch you unfold like a crumpled dollar bill in his palm. 

He holds you by your shirt, chest heaving, you can feel his breath on your face and mouth and you’re breathing heavily for your own good reasons. You don’t know if he feels it too but he just shocked some sense into you. 

His eyes leave you for a split second, and stare down at your crotch. Then they slowly, slowly return to your face, just as unreadable as before. 

Yeah.

You’re hard. 

“How long you got?” You say spitefully, as if coming to terms with it for the first time all over again and you find tears threatening behind your eyes.

“Christ,” he sounds disgusted, “I want you the fuck out of my house by tomorrow.” Izzy shoves you into the wall, he lets you go and he leaves.

You retreat to bed and you sleep on your own that night, both you and him wonderin’ why it is you gotta ruin everything good you find.


	5. Sunday Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Still... it’s nice to see you,” he says, and you can see right through the polite facade like glass. But it’s whatever. He turns on his heel and walks into the tiny old kitchen. “How about a cup of coffee? Fresh pot.”_
> 
> On Sunday morning, Axl burns the toast, seeks closure and drinks too much coffee.

You’ve always found that you don’t sleep well.

It used to happen that when you’d go to bed, back in your twenties, you’d wake up violently in the middle of the night; not as the result of a nightmare, more like feeling a forceful wave of nausea crashing into you. You’d cling to your bed in the dark, breathing and shaking, willing it to pass. You’d come to find out years later, at the hands of a therapist, that it was less likely nausea and more likely an anxiety attack of some description. 

Some nights you’d wake up to shadowy figures in your room or clumps of spiders on your wall. God, you shared a mattress with Izzy in your old box room back when the hallucinations got really bad – “Spiders, motherfucker, spiders!” you’d shout as you tripped over him, strippin’ off your clothes and shaking out your head while he blinked blearily into the night: “Man, ain’t no fuckin’ spiders nowhere. Shut your crazy ass up.” You ain’t had them in a while, so you ain’t brought ‘em up with your therapist. You’d rather not know what the fuck’s goin’ on in your head to make that shit up.

Some nights you couldn’t even sleep. You’d begin to drift away and then all of a sudden, your heart would sink, your body would go cold, and anxiety and adrenaline would force you back awake. Your body wouldn’t let you fall asleep, like it thought you were about to die, man, those nights were the scariest. Luckily you ain’t have those no more either. Last time you had one, Erin found you in the living room, nursing coffee, askin’ you _honey, what’s wrong?_ And you’d tell her that you couldn’t sleep. It was true enough. 

So suffice to say, you and sleep don’t have the best relationship. You recall all this now, because you’ve just startled awake to a familiar sickness, this time flavoured with whiskey, and you’ve been breathin’ and shakin’ and clingin’ to Izzy’s guest room bed frame wonderin’ why the fuck this shit has to happen to you. And you wonder if you’re gonna vomit murky brown all over his flowery quilt. 

It passes. Of course it does. It always does. But you can’t stay in this room any fuckin’ longer, because you feel like you’re gonna die. You slowly ease yourself out of the bed, where the sheets are damp with sweat, and fumble with the wardrobe doors in the darkness. You don’t know what you’re lookin’ for, a thin blanket or somethin’. You see sheets and linens, and a single threadbare red sweater sat up on a plastic hanger. 

And somethin’, god knows what, compels you to smell it.

Tenatively at first, you hold up the sleeve to your nose. Just checking if it’s clean. And it smells musty, like it’s been in the guest room closet for five years. Like the smell of clothes at the thrift store, stale and dusty, and kind of flowery... because its been sat on top of regularly cleaned sheets, you guess. And something else too, that you catch in the back of your throat.

You pull the sweater off the hanger and stick your face in it, breathing in deeply. Smells like he does. An’ you don’t know why you’re holdin’ it to your fuckin’ chest like a fag but the thought don’t cross your mind when you’re still sick and shakin’ from a surprise visit from your old friend Monsieur Psych O’Sis. You don’t want to dwell on that. You just stand breathing heavily into this admittedly random sweater of dubious ownership, and it _does_ make you feel better. 

You catch sight of yourself in the mirror built into the wardrobe door. You pull the sweater on over your head and stare at the reflection. The sweater is miles too big for you, and the cuffs swing round your fingers. Your hairs trapped in the stretched collar. You put it on back to front and the faded label sticks into your neck. You look like a sad sickly child, but it’ll do.

You open your door and silently creep downstairs, eyeing Izzy’s door curiously. Maybe you should be packing right now.  
The stairs creak underneath you as you realise and remember what transpired between the two of you and you wince.

And after the initial embarrassment, you find yourself glancing to the spot on the wall that Izzy had you pinned to.

He told you to get out of his house. What were his exact words? _I want you out of my house by tomorrow._ Surely he can’t mean that. Christ, you’re both a couple of dramatic fucks. 

You start back down the stairs, ignoring it as best as you can, and slip into the living room. You’re surprised to meet two pairs of beady eyes– Treader usually sleeps with Izzy, and you ain’t sure where the fuck Ripley sleeps but you heard her disappointed yowls earlier when you slammed your door shut. 

It’s like a mexican stand off.

Treader gives a loud boof under his breath, warning you, still unsure of you. Ripley takes the opportunity to jump you, yipping, and you hush both of them as they work each other up. 

“Please,” you croak under your breath, “be quiet now, please. Shh, please, dumb fuckin’ dogs. You’ll wake him. That’s it, that’s it, quiet now.” You subdue Ripley by giving her attention. You put Treader at ease by holding out your hand for him to sniff, and he subsequently gets bored and shifts to the other end of the couch. 

So you can multitask. Huh, who knew?

You sit yourself down on the larger couch, still plunged in the darkness, parts of the room illuminated by the cracks in the curtains. You shift in the sweater and Ripley jumps up and nestles into your side, and you find yourself staring at the illuminated window. For some reason, this all seems so ridiculously familiar, not his house, not the situation, but the feeling of being in this house and in this situation, as if you’ve lived it all before. You stare at the window for the longest minute of your life clenching and unclenching your fists, trying to tune out the blood flow in your head. You breathe deeply, in and out, and you spot your old pack of camels, now topped up with hand rolled cigarettes curtesy of your delightful host. 

You light one up, and the soft orange of the flame puts a little warmth back into your body. Surrounded by blues and oranges and the silver of the lighter; you think of Erin an’ her brown eyes again.

The cigarette relaxes you. Goes down easy, anchors you to the floor, knocks some sense back into you and turns your stomach. You look eagerly around for an ash tray, and spot the empty glass of water Izzy had been drinking last night. He’d stormed to his room after he cornered you on the stairs. You notice the bottle of whiskey staring at you.

You shake your head and ash your cig in the empty glass, holding it lazily as you smoke away in the dark. You hear a small but piercing whine come from your right, and you sigh; you pinch your cigarette between your index and middle fingers and hold the glass against your palm, now using your free hand to quieten Ripley in long, sad pets.

“What’s goin’ on, sugar,” you ask her dryly and for the most part she stays silent, and for the most part you enjoy the company. Treader still sits on the opposite couch with his back to you, leaning over the arm and staring at the bottom of the stairs.

You smoke your cigarette, watching the bright square of the window as if it was a tv. And eventually, when your eyes get heavy, you drop your cig into the glass of water, pull your legs up onto the couch, and fall back asleep with your head in your elbows on the arm of the couch.

Which goes without saying that when you awaken however long later, you’ve got a god awful crick in your neck. You groan into your arms and sit yourself up, and the first thing you notice is that the kitchen light’s on. And you hear the faucet running. Which means that Izzy’s awake and walked right past you conked out on his couch and said nothing. How fuckin’ relentlessly awkward.

You can’t get up and walk into the kitchen; what the hell would you say to him? You suppose you could make a break for it and run upstairs, see if you could fool him into thinkin’ you were just a guilty mirage of a lifeless corpse– oh, but Ripley’s still next to you and she’ll scream bloody murder if you move. No concept of discretion whatsoever.

You frown. And you go back to your uncomfortable position and squeeze your eyes shut and pretend to still be sleeping. Maybe Izzy is less inclined to acknowledge you than you are him, and wants to dive back upstairs as soon as possible. Maybe he’ll just walk past you. Sure enough, the faucet stops and you hear the hum of the coffee machine. What time even is it? You open your eyes and note how much brighter the living room looks, but still dull and blue. It’s real fuckin’ early but you can’t say much else.

You hear a couple clanks and rustles from the kitchen as Izzy potters about. You hear him curse under his breath when he drops his spoon too loud into the sink. What, is he worried about wakin’ you? You can put him out of your misery right now, walk right in an’ say _never fear, honey, for I have been awake this entire time! Now how ‘bout some shitty coffee and burnt toast?_

You want to groan audibly.

For all the noise he’s makin’ in there, Ripley sure don’t seem to give a shit. You wonder if she maybe died during the night; you pop an eye open just to make sure, an’ she remains subdued at your hip. She meets your eye with big, sad glassy ones and you brace yourself, thinkin’ she’s gonna start barking for your attention and alert Izzy to the fact that you’re livin’ and breathin’, but she don’t. She places her head in between her paws and sighs. You close your eyes again, an’ anxiety swirls in your stomach when you hear footsteps and the flick of the light switch.

The footsteps stop, and you can feel his eyes on you. Burning straight into you, scorching you, and you feel like you’re going to twitch or sneeze or come up gasping for air, you don’t know. An’ your heart starts beatin’ so loud that you’re sure he can hear it, when he starts coming towards you. A ghostly presence, an’ through your eyelids you can make out the dull shape of his arm reach across you and place something on the small table beside you in the alcove of the wall – his coffee cup? – and then he, surprisingly gently, shakes your shoulder.

“Axl,” his voice is soft and hushed, like the neighbours are gonna hear him through walls of brick from a three hundred feet away.

You never rehearsed how you were gonna wake up. Should you jolt? Be confused? Pretend to be dead? How fuckin’ ridiculous is your life to the point where this is your biggest anxiety right now? 

You just open your eyes, and he bends over you looking exhausted.

“Mm,” you respond in a way you imagine to be groggily, and take this moment to stretch your aching body.

“Did you– you didn’t sleep down here all night, did you?” His expression is unreadable.

For the most part. “No,” you murmur, sitting yourself upright and rubbing your face. “Woke up an’ couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Izzy’s brow knits, clearly interested and he gestures downwards with a nod of his head. “What are you doin’ wearin’ that?”

You pause, confused, and then a wave of panic surges through you as you look down at th red sweater. You grunt throatily. “I dunno, man, it was in the wardrobe, I figured it’d be cold down here.” Nice save.

“It‘s Annika’s brother’s.” A sly curl round his lips tells you he possibly _might_ be seeing right through you.

Your eyes shoot open. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

“Who did you think it belonged to?” Oh, the humour in his voice makes your face flush hot.

 _You._ You shake your head. “Goddamn, it don’t matter. My head feels like concrete. What time is it?”

“It’s, like, six thirty. How long you been down here?”

“Christ, I don’t know, man. Listen, about last night–“

Izzy takes an exasperated sharp intake of breath and ignores you frostily, repeating himself. “How long you been down here? Nights are cold this time of year, you should’ve brought a blanket.” 

You blink, trying to keep up with the subject change. “I had your dumbass dog to keep me warm.”

“For sure,” he says sourly. He sighs, looks around, and then sits himself on the edge of the coffee table directly opposite you. He takes a long sip out of the coffee mug you’ve just realised he’s holding. Wait, so what did he put down next to you? You glance to your left and see that he did in fact place down a mug of coffee, right next to the now brown glass of water with your cigarette in it. You glance back to him, and he tilts his head as if to confirm your suspicions, _yeah, Axl, I made that for you._ Your hand hovers over it as you look to him for one more confirmation, and he nods.

“Why you up so early?” You say, taking a long sip from the steaming cup. Today’s mug is handpainted, with small birds and butterflies. “You usually wake up this time?”

You see his silhouette straighten in the dark and he stares at you for what feels like the longest time. “Just... woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

You sigh and shift stiffly, sitting yourself upright, rubbing your eyes with one sweatered hand. He takes another sip and shrugs, “same as you, I guess. It stinks of cigarettes down here.”

You glance up at him. “Yeah, you really need to cut down.”

Izzy gives a short, dry noise in his throat, like a lazy laugh, and relief washes over you when you wonder if he’s just as ashamed of last night as you are. You test the waters.

“You still hellbent on kickin’ me out today?” You ask him outright, and he stiffens.

Izzy frowns and breathes deep and appears to think it over. “I... No.”

“No?” You can’t hide the shock on your face, because kickin’ you out would be a complete surefire way of refuting the outrageous accusations you made about him being susceptible to any kind of manipulation by yourself. An’ if he’s takin’ the high road like this, then you don’t think you could ever live the guilt down. Unless he knew you were barking defensive nonsense, and is comfortable enough in his own position to take pity on you for it. _Jesus fucking Christ, Izzy, after all this time, how you be so hard to read?_ “What’s that supposed to mean?” You eye him suspiciously, ‘cause goddamn. You’d throw your own damn self out the door if you said shit like that to yourself.

“It means,” Izzy soothes, still sipping on his coffee, “that if you feel as pathetic as you look, I’m inclined to forget the whole fuckin’ thing.”

 _Of course._ You drop your hand from your face and your jaw slackens, but you recover quickly. For some reason, that cut you deep. 

Though you guess you do look pathetic. Sleep deprived, whiskey in your system, wearing his wife’s brother’s sweater like a security blanket and voluntarily sleepin’ on the couch with the dogs. You _do_ feel as pathetic as you look. And you flush bright red.

He watches you closely, gauging your reaction. You take a sharp inhale and look off to your side, avoiding his eyes. It’s too early for this shit.

“You know how hard tried last night?” You tell him sternly, commandingly, emotionally, when you eventually look back up. “I fucking _tried_ with you, Izzy. I shouldn’t’a given you the booze, I should’a known better, I’m sorry for that. But you took it, an’ you were fuckin’ _hellbent_ on provokin’ me.”

Izzy frowns deeply, recoiling from your threatening tone, pushing himself up against the coffee table. You lean over him.

“I‘m sorry, you can tell how fuckin’ sorry I am.” Your eyes are almost pleading. His start to soften. “I’ll find a fuckin’ hotel in town or somethin’, I don’t care. But goddamn, you were a bitch last night. Axl’s always the villain, yeah, let’s blame fuckin’- fuckin’ crazy Axl for everythin’. I ain’t taking that shit. You- _you started it,_ yo, shit.”

You’re running through the entire night in your head again, trying to decipher who exactly was worse to the other. You insisted he take the booze, for sure, which was a dick move on your part – but he didn’t have to _drink_ it. Then he turned sour, punishing you over God knows what, and you punished him back. An’ the final blow was puttin’ your hands on him, but you still don’t think you’re in the wrong. He started it, you finished it. You can’t view this objectively. _This_ is the issue with motherfuckin’ Izzy; you’re too goddamn biased against him any day o’ the week. 

He purses his lips and avoids your eye. Eventually, he says “just forget it, Axl.”

“What?”

“Don’t bring it up no more. I accept what you’re sayin’. We’re gonna forget about it.”

You’re about ready to explode. It’s so goddamn– _like him._ So goddamn like him to just brush you off. 

“Man, fuck this, I–“ you’re about to tell him that you’re gonna pack your bags and head to a hotel, until he stands up and slips out of your shadow.

“You hungry?” He says coolly, sauntering back into the kitchen.

You’re left confused and agape. But you _are_ hungry.

You sit bewildered, shaking your head. “Yeah,” you call back, and in your soul you know that that’s the last you’re gonna say of that. You follow him into the kitchen, wrappin’ your arms around yourself, hugging this stranger’s ugly lacoste sweater.

You settle at the dining table while he drops two pieces of wholewheat bread into the toaster. “You gonna burn ‘em this time?” You say bitterly.

“No,” he humours your pettiness, “‘cause you’re gonna watch ‘em for me.”

You shrug. Yeah, you’ll watch ‘em real good. Gonna be the most beautiful, golden slices of toast the motherfucker’s ever seen. Asshole.

You spot the coffee pot still half full. “Mind if I refill?” You ask, not waiting for an answer. Izzy just grunts as he cracks a couple eggs into the frying pan. As they sizzle, you lean over his shoulder.

“I’ll have mine over easy,” you tell him. He immediately starts hacking at the eggs, scrambling them violently. You back off, and sit back down with your hot coffee, staring at the toaster passively. 

“Is this decaf?” You wonder aloud.

“No,” he says back.

“No?” You’re surprised, and stare down at your cup. You decide to maybe start taking it easy. “You got some kinda separate, secret pot somewhere?”

“No,” he glances over at you. “Why?”

“What, you’re just drinkin’ regular?”

“Christ, I ain’t fuckin- it’s six in the mornin’, for sure I would’ve thrown you out on your ass if I’d been drinkin’ decaf, let me tell you.”

“Aight, okay, fuckin’– grumpy ass,” you narrow your eyes and grab the pot. You lean over his other shoulder and refill his cup right to the brim. “Here. Go forth, be enlightened.”

You feel a little strange leaning over him like that, filling up his cup like a doting wife. But you don’t dwell on it because it’s at this point, you smell the distinct smell of burnt toast. “Motherfucker,” you curse, leaving him, and you hear him exhale deeply. Sure enough, you burnt the toast.

“You callin’ me bitter or somethin’?” He murmurs slyly, catching your eye from over his shoulder, playfully echoing your teasing words.

You smile strangely, pulling the toast onto two plates you’d fished from his cupboard, “...be damned if I’m wrong.”

As you settle down into breakfast, Izzy repeats the sour question you’d expertly avoided the other day.

“You gonna see your family while you’re here?”

“My family?” you blink. 

“Yeah,” Izzy shrugs. “I don’t know. Amy?”

“Amy?” you repeat him again. “Nah, Amy lives in– well, I don’t know where the fuck she lives but it ain’t Lafayette, last time I checked.”

Izzy looks up from his plate, surprised. “You don’t know where she lives?”

You frown, surprised that he’s surprised. “I mean, we talk on the phone enough. If I had to put money on it, I’d say Indianapolis. No, yeah, outside of Indianapolis, for sure. Look, man, I ain’t got my fuckin’ address book on me.”

“What about your brother?”

You scoff. “Sure, he’s probably around here somewhere.”

Izzy shrugs and sips his coffee. “I got a yellow pages, if you really care enough to look.”

“Can’t say I do, man, sorry,” you reach for your own coffee and blow on it to cool it down. 

“So who’s left?” Izzy says quietly while you’re distracted, and you can’t tell if he’s actually askin’ or if he’s tryin’ to fuck with your head. You look up confidently, an’ cast him a cold stare, ‘cause he knows your mama’s long gone, and he knows who’s left.

You shrug, still staring pointedly, and you let your eyes slink off to the right. “Maybe I will see the old fucker. I owe him a visit.”

Izzy gauges your response and stays eerily quiet, as if he regrets bringing it up.  
Serves him right. You take a long sip of your coffee.

“You want a ride?” Izzy says quietly, and you choke. 

“From you, in your fuckin’ car?” you splutter, covering your mouth and coughing obnoxiously.

“I ain’t that bad a fuckin’ driver–“

“Yeah, you are, Izz.”

“Reminds me, I need to get my license renewed.”

“When does it run out?”

“Last year.”

“Jesus fuck, Izzy.” You shake your head. “You ain’t driving me nowhere.”

His eyelashes flutter as he smiles. “Suit yourself,” he says, in a way that’s almost sultry.

“If you wanna– I could do with some company, if you wanna come.” You shrug, trying to act nonchalant, sipping on your coffee. 

He laughs under his breath. “Come with you to see your dad.”

“Goddamn, no, I don’t know. Maybe you wanna go for a drive, you can wait the fuck outside,” you shake your head. “Shit, it’s fuckin’ Sunday. Son of a bitch is gonna be in a churchy mood.”

“So moral support,” Izzy brings his cup to his mouth and looks you straight on.

“Well, if you wanna talk up your place in my life then sure, I guess.”

He rolls his eyes. “I could go for bein’ driven round in a Cadillac all day, for sure.”

“Well,” you hum. “That’s settled then, ain’t it. He won’t get back til later, most likely.”

Izzy takes your empty plates and dumps them in the sink. “Go kill time for a couple hours then. I gotta walk the dogs.”

“So go walk ‘em,” you stand up and stretch aggressively, the hem of the red jumper hitching slightly over your stomach. “I’m gonna go shower. What’s the temperature lookin’ like today, weatherman?”

When you turn to face him, he’s scowling. “I think it’s gonna be warm,” he concedes, frowning. 

“Cool. See you later.” And you slink off, diving up the stairs, relieved to be out of Izzy’s line of sight.

You hide in your room until you hear him come up the stairs, get changed, and leave with the dogs.

At around 10, you descend down the stairs, newly showered and dressed.

Izzy lingers in the doorway in a thin faded shirt a size too big for him, tied off, dark jeans, and a small chain round his neck. Christ, when he dresses properly, he starts lookin’ his goddamn age instead of ten years older.

“You look nice,” you blurt out.

“By all means, sound surprised,” he says lazily, glancing at his cassio.

“Is that your meet the father outfit?” You jibe, and he looks up exasperated. 

“Man, I ain’t goin’ nowhere near your fuckin’ father.” He scoffs. He opens the front door and beckons you to follow him.

“Hell, man,” you start forward and grab your coat with your car keys in the pocket, “I don’t blame you.”

“Be good,” he calls out behind him, thinkin’ he’s talkin’ to you ‘til you realise he’s talkin’ to the dogs. When he closes the door behind him, he puts his hands on his hips and stares out at your car. “It’s a motherfuckin’ nice car, I can’t lie to you.”

“It’s sweet as shit,” you elbow him as you move past, your ego and bravado newly inflated. “Quit gawkin’ an’ get inside.”

He clicks his tongue and obediently stalks towards the passenger door. As soon as he sits down he’s shifting in his seat, looking behind him, running his hands over the leatherette. Like an excited dog.

“What’s with you? Didn’t think you were into cars.”

“I know a nice one when I see one. What’d this cost you?” 

“Enough,” you muse as you slide behind the wheel. “I dunno how long I’m gonna be here. You fine waitin’?”

“Sure,” he shrugs, and you turn on the ignition. Give him permission to fuck with the radio an’ he’ll lie flat out in the sun for as long as you want. 

You know your way vaguely into town. You tilt your head as you reverse out of the driveway.

“Stick some music on if you want,” you murmur, frowning. You see him visibly perk up.

“Oh, sure,” he raises his eyebrows and all but pounces on the dial, fuckin’ with the frequencies, and you fish a cigarette out your pack when you peel off up the road.

You grew up in this tiny shit hole house in the suburbs. A two bed, one bath type of deal, with an airing cupboard that was improvised into a cramped third bedroom for Amy. It was a long, rectangular, baby blue monstrosity with one door in the front and one in the back, set atop a concrete foundation with a couple metres of grass in the yard that blurred into next door’s.

Izz never came to your house a lot. You wouldn’t even hang out a ridiculous amount anyway, an’ when you did it was usually at his house. Kids floating in and out of his house, an’ you’d usually linger. 

That’s the thing with you an’ Izzy, is that you never thought you’d get on with him. Even in a group you’d be wary of each other, ‘cause he knew you as a total headcase an’ you knew him as some kinda white trash motherfucker; _weird kids_ , your dad would say, _you stay away from ‘em._ Izzy’s mom and your mom went to school together, an’ your dad would always tip his head towards your mama an’ say _that’s your doin’, he gets some gypsy girl knocked up, it’ll be your fault._ And she never, ever stood up for herself, an’ it makes your blood boil.

When your mom was sick, you flew yourself over fast enough to catch her couple dyin’ breaths. Then you flew back, an’ you flew back again for the funeral. Each time determined to spend less time in the goddamn county than before. 

An’ the funeral was a sombre affair, somehow worse than the night she died. Under the fluorescent lights of the hospital – you didn’t want to see her but you knew you’d regret it if you didnt – with her red hair dull and thinning an’ her face sunken and pale. Strapped to that goddamn machine, mask on her face, you were in the hospital for all of twenty minutes before she died. An’ Amy was sat beside her, clutching her hand, wearing a pink and yellow flowery summer dress. Stuart hung at the edge of the bed, lookin’ nervous, flitting about like a goddamn pigeon, with the long thick hair he got from mama pulled back into a thick pony tail an’ the motherfucker looked like he ain’t slept in months. Stephen hung in the corner, close to mom’s head, graying and wrinkled and _small_ , an’ by this point you hadn’t seen him for at least three years. And he looked at you, an’ he just looked sad. You slunk around the hospital room, mama wasn’t really lucid enough for you to talk to her, but Amy and Stuart stepped out to let you have a _word_ with her an’ the thought repulsed you, to be honest. Stephen stayed put, and you sat where Amy had been sitting in her pretty pink dress under the fluorescent lights, and you just squeezed your mama’s hand. She lolled her head over to look at you and you felt a stabbing in your chest like you ain’t never felt, and that’s when Stephen’s voice came booming into your ear: _They got her on morphine. You’ll be lucky if she even realises what she’s lookin’ at._

Your head snapped up and you stared at him with so much hate in your eyes. And he stared at you back.

 _You shoulda come to see her when you had the chance_ , he added.

She died not long after with the four of you in the room. Amy wailing, Stuart sighing, Stephen staying stone cold _still_ like it’d been him that died instead.

And you said, _excuse me, excuse me,_ and you left the room with a hand over your eyes and you kicked the wall opposite. You paced outside the door rubbing your face and willing yourself not to cry and lamenting how it had to happen _like this, to you,_ in a room filled with people you built your life on avoiding. Wondering why you were still mad at a dead woman, over things that seem so petty now, and wondering why even now you couldn’t ever let it go. 

But she died under fluorescent lights, next to three kids with bright red hair, next to her daughter’s colourful summer dress, next to gaudy yellow coffee cups from the cafeteria, just as the sun was setting.

And that’s why funeral was worse, because you all wore black and it was raining, and you had to experience the same feelings all over again but this time in black and white. Izzy actually called you after he heard, and asked if he could come pay his respects. With your heart in your throat, you politely but firmly shut him down. The four of you met in the living room of your old house, and you were almost late; Amy stuck close to you the whole day an’ you held her hand, held her umbrella, and in return she hugged you when she saw tears threatening from behind your eyes, and guided you away from pulsating relatives. The two of you didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t want to talk to anyone, stayed glued together all damn day. You saw her back to her guest house that night and you bolted off, got drunk, and flew back the next morning without saying as much as a fuckin’ word to anyone else other than _hey, thank you for coming._

An’ that was the last time you saw Stephen, and that was the last time you were in his goddamn house. 

Why are you going to see him again?

The clown in your passenger seat hums along to the radio. Of course, how could you forget? 

But then you think nah, he ain’t made you do shit. You’re going to see your dad because you think you can dig up some closure for yourself, but you don’t yet know if you deserve any.

Izzy makes a noise in his throat. “I ain’t been back through here in a long ass time.”

You recognise yourselves as being a block or two away from the Isbell house. So a couple more blocks to yours.

“When was the last time?” You ask him, on your second or third cigarette, sick of musing over your own life.

“When we moved her out an’ cleared all her stuff,” he shrugs. “I dunno. A year or two?”

“Mm,” you nod your head. “I’m gonna park a block or two away.”

“Suit yourself,” you can see him fiddling with something. You drop a sneaky glance at his hands; your cigarette packet.

You drop your own cig into the street after one final drag. “You can have one if you want,” you gesture with your head when he looks confused.

“I don’t smoke,” he reminds you sternly.

“Could’ve fooled me,” you narrow your eyes. “I’m seein’ my pack shrink suspiciously quickly.”

“Motherfucker, that’s ‘cause _you’re_ smokin’ like goddamn nothin’ else these days.”

You open your mouth to retort but you think he might be right. “Whatever you say,” you just shake your head, and he frowns.

You pull into a cul de sac, get out and slam your door shut. You throw the keys at Izzy.

“No drivin’ her,” you tell him sternly and he mock salutes you, then sits back and highers the sound on the radio. “If I ain’t back in twenty, call the police.”

Izzy misses that last bit. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing,” you wave him off. “See you later.”

And you take off down the street.  
Your heartbeat falls into step with the beating of your shoes on the pavement.

And as the door creaks open and you get a strangely familiar bout of anxiety, you think _goddamn. Why the fuck don’t I call before I turn up places?_

“Bill?” Eerily similar to the way Izzy said your name on Friday night when you stood at his door, Stephen drags the word from the back of his throat to the front of his mouth, an’ he does it like it’s pure poison.

“Hey,” you give him a big, warm, fake smile, and he smiles back, somehow bigger, warmer and faker.

And you stay like that, eyeing each other up.

“What a surprise,” he says eventually, all vile false sweetnesses, “I...” he shakes his head and looks you up and down, and then steps back to unbolt the porch door. “Come on in, son. Had no idea you were in town.”

“Nah, sorry. Would’ve called but...” you trail off as you step into the tiny living room. _But I’m seemingly more fucking compelled by spontaneity these days_ , you finish in your head. 

Nothing‘s changed since the last time you were here. Your mama’s shit is all still here.

You thought you could handle it, and you can, but you can’t help but stiffen in the face of it.

“Is it...are you in town for...work?” He says precariously. You smirk. 

“Nah, not really.” You turn to face him and shrug. “Visitin’ a friend, only here for the weekend. Thought I’d drop in. See how you’re doing.”

“Still... it’s nice to see you,” he says, and you can see right through the polite facade like glass. But it’s whatever. He turns on his heel and walks into the tiny old kitchen. “How about a cup of coffee? Fresh pot.”

You grimace when he calls you that. “Sure,” you follow him. The kitchen it just like you remember it, small and yellow with blue linoleum floor. Dirty lace curtains, tiny table and chairs in the corner. The back door is open wide, letting fresh warm air into the house; you’re glad, ‘cause the air and the light makes the whole house seem much less depressing. Boxes and papers are stacked on the chairs – mom’s old stuff. Your empathy aches when you start seein’ him as a grieving old widow with no idea how to live on his own.

“Move some stuff and sit yourself down,” he gestures, still with that authoritative edge to his voice. “If I’d known you were comin’, I’d have cleaned up a bit, heh.”

“For me? Nah,” you try and apply some charm you’ve picked up. He side eyes you like you’re crazy and he don’t wanna turn his back on you. 

“You take cream or sugar?” He asks dryly.

“Just black, if that’s alright,” you lean back in your chair and look out at the overgrown garden. 

“No skin off my back,” he shrugs. “You know, your mama used to have both.”

“Yeah, I remember,” you muse, still passively staring at the grass. “Used to have it white as fuck an’ sweet as anything.” Then you cover your mouth in an instinctive reaction more than fifteen years old; “Shit, I’m sorry. Chr- Sorry, I did it again.”

He chuckles somewhat emptily but stays silent. Then he comes over to table and falls into the seat opposite you, pushing your coffee towards you.

You stare at it like an old friend. Ah, yes, your third cup of coffee this morning. You send your condolences to Izzy’s patience.

You run your finger round the rim of the mug absentmindedly, waiting for it to cool, and you smile softly.

“It’s always weird when I come back here,” you muse out loud, aiming for harmless small talk.

He nods knowingly. “I’ll bet. How’s life in California?”

“It’s–“ You stop, knowing the ghost of your mama is at your side ready to chastise you for lying. “It’s fine, just work.”

“How’s that wife of yours?” He says as your bring the mug to your mouth, and you pause in the spot. Which fuckin’ wife is he talkin’ about? You didn’t exactly go round mouthin’ off when you divorced Erin.

“She’s doing well,” you ain’t exactly lying, they’re both doin’ well, last time you checked, just... better now that you ain’t in the picture.

“Ain’t she up here with you?”

“No,” you shake your head and you shrug. “We’re takin’ some time apart.”

You don’t know why you told him that but he sighs. “Can’t be helped sometimes. People go rushin’ into divorce these days, don’t even try to work through their problems.” He slurps his coffee. “When something’s broke, you fix it, you don’t throw it away. That’s how me an’ your mother lasted as long as we did.”

 _You and my mama lasted as long as you did because she never grew a fuckin’ spine,_ says the voice in your head. 

“That’s a good way o’ lookin’ at it,” you nod, eyes dropping down to your coffee.

He clears his throat, and you feel weirdly submissive.

“Who’d you say you’re staying with? I didn’t think you knew anyone out here worth visiting.” He stops and looks at his mug. He smiles. “That sounds terrible. You know what I mean.”

You politely laugh back. “No, it’s cool, I’m stayin’ with, uh, Izzy. He lives back round here now.” You gauge his reaction.

“Izzy,” he repeats raising an eyebrow. 

“You’ve met him, I’m sure. The oldest Isbell kid, remember?” 

“Mm,” he murmurs through a sip of coffee, waving his finger. “The Isbells, yeah, I remember.” His eyes twinkle as he talks an’ you can’t pinpoint what his tone means. “The one you went runnin’ off with.”

That ain’t how you remember it. “Not quite,” you tilt your head.

“Sorry, the one you went runnin’ after,” he corrects himself, somewhat passive aggressively, and you almost choke on your coffee. Now that definitely ain’t how you remember it.

“Sure,” you grit your teeth.

“Weird kids, those Isbells,” he frowns. “But you find friendship where you find it, I suppose.”

You don’t bother askin’ him what he means by that. You shift in your seat. “So how was church?” 

He smiles sadly. “Good. Twenty fifth week in ordinary time.”

“I would’ve gone but wouldn’t’a thought you’d want me rockin’ up to the parish unannounced.” You shrug, and he laughs.

“You’re always welcome,” he nods, “but some notice wouldn’t go unappreciated.”

You force a smile, but your uneasiness sat at this kitchen table grows.

“What’s your friend up to these days then? He’s the one who- I thought y’all worked together. Or am I thinkin’ of someone else?”

The way he dances around what it is you actually do for a living makes it sound like you’re a fuckin’ drug lord.

“No, no, that’s him, but he, uh, up an’ quit a couple years ago.” You take a long sip of coffee. “He’s travellin’, doin’ his own thing. Livin’ off his royalties. I’ll see him around every couple months or so.”

“I see,” Stephen nods sagely, like he gives a fuck, but you both know he don’t. Hey, he’s mirroring your niceties and neither of you can ask for more. 

And you both sip your coffee awkwardly, ‘til you see him tilt his head and his eyes narrow.

“What?” You say instinctively, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, and you regret what you said and how you say it because you get visions of a fifteen year old you being dragged across the table.

You know what he’s gonna say before he says it but _goddamn,_ you plead, _goddamn, no–_

He don’t seem to notice. “You know, you look just like your mother,” he says eventually.

And the panic that that sentence sends surging through your stomach and up your throat is parallel to none. His gaze turns curious as he watches your expression sour, because you can’t help that. Like water pulsing against a dam, you threaten to lose your mind.

You open your mouth to say something but you just stammer. “I’m sorry,” you blurt out eventually, and he narrows his eyes. The worst part is that you don’t even understand why that sentence evoked such a vile reaction in you.

“Sorry,” you take a deep breath, using the exercises your therapist taught you, trying to regulate yourself before you end up flying through the window. “That’s still- it’s still sore for me,” you lie brazenly, sipping your coffee and gazing off to the side, hoping he’ll buy it.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see him deflate like a balloon. “I understand, son.” He nods. “It don’t go away overnight, people don’t get that.”

You nod nonchalantly, still looking round the kitchen, still clutching your mug.

“Maybe it could do you good to see someone,” he shrugs.

“I do,” you murmur without thinking. He stares at you, and you look up to meet his eye.

He nods, unsure. “I spoke to the priests a lot after your mother passed. They were a great help.”

You feel the rising in your throat again, panic replaced by bitter resentment. “I see a therapist bi-weekly,” you stare at him.

He stares back.

You don’t know what you wanted him to feel by telling him that, an’ you don’t know what you wanted him to say. An’ you sure as shit don’t feel any better for it.

“Don’t waste your money,” is his eventual response. You resign from the conversation, and you go back to drinking your coffee. Maybe you drink yours a little faster than him, so you can get the fuck outta there. 

“Sorry, I’m on a schedule today,” you’re apologetic, when Stephen stands up to lead you out. He looks about as relieved as you do.

“Ah, can’t be helped,” he says. When he opens the door, you stride outside, with all the power of god in your step, but then you hesitate. And good god, does he feel it too. 

“Hey, listen,” you turn to face him and his brow knits, wary of what you’re about to ask. “You got an address for...” you trail off when you remember who you’re talkin’ to. “Uh, Stu. You got an address for Stu?”

“Stu?” Stephen blinks, and his face looks washed with relief. “Let me get my address book, wait here.”

You blink after him as he shuffles away, and you find yourself wondering why part of you still cowers. He’s getting frailer, he’s getting old. You could kill him with one punch. You bite your lip and expel those thoughts, turning around and staring out onto the patio. 

Somehow, your mind always goes to the darkest places.

You shouldn’t’a come here. Goddamn Izzy. Maybe you should’ve brought him in with you. Then you coulda had him drive circles round the house, with you pointing out _I got beat there, got beat there, oh an’ I got beat there,_ and watchin’ while he squirmed. Yeah, fuck Izzy for makin’ you come here.

“Here,” comes a voice from behind you, and Stephen writes feverishly into the back of his address book, before ripping the page out and handing it to you. In scrawly capital letters, it says Stuart Bailey, an almost illegible street address, and _Illinois._

Illinois? Christ. 

You stare down at the piece of paper and then meet his eye. 

“Thanks,” you say wearily. “For the coffee, and uh,” you gesture with the paper. He just nods. 

“Take care,” he says seriously.

“You too,” you say instinctively, and start down the porch when you hear the door close behind you. You let out a breath you didn’t realise you were holding.

You turn the corner, headin’ down to where you parked your car, and you see a figure leaning against it, smoking a cigarette.

“Those are mine,” you call down, and Izzy stiffens. He grimaces and drops it, crushing it beneath his foot.

“Christ, you look happy,” he scans you up and down, clearly amused at the frown on your face. When you feel it turn into a violent scowl, he expertly changes the subject. “How’d it go? You were gone a while.”

“Yeah, sorry,” you shrug, and sidestep Izzy to slide into the driver’s seat.

“Everything okay?” He eyes you suspiciously, making the long walk round to the passenger side.

“Sure,” you deadpan. “Got an address for Stu.”

“Nearby?”

“Illinois,” you raise your eyebrows as you turn the ignition. You shake your head. 

“Least it’s not California,” Izzy hums, and you find yourself laughing out loud spitefully.

“Goddamn, the motherfucker would move himself in if I let my guard down,” you lick your lips and throw your arm around Izzy’s seat, eyeing the back of the street as your reverse. “I dunno why I asked for his fuckin’ address, like I have any fuckin’ desire to go visit the motherfucker.”

You bite your cheek nervously, knowing effectively why you asked ‘cuz you panicked. You let words tumble out your mouth in an attempt to swallow the anxiety you’re feeling about even thinking about Amy round him. You an’ him are civil and polite these days, but when it hits you that he was never ever a good dad, you find yourself stuck for how to move on.

“Didn’t get one for Amy?”

When Izzy says that you audibly sigh. Not his fault, you never told him none of that. 

“I didn’t think he’d have one,” you aren’t exactly lying; you hope he doesn’t have one. “Besides, she don’t talk to him.”

“Do any of you talk to him?” Izzy folds his arms, physically dismayed at being relegated to the passenger seat, but with an edge of adult curiosity to his voice when he talks. Maybe he figures you can talk about it now. It’s been long enough, why wouldn’t you be able to?

“Well, I just did,” you shift gears as you drive out of the street, frosting over and trying to quell the conversation. Just cuz you could talk about it, don’t mean you have to.

Izzy scoffs, “yeah, but you don’t exactly talk to him on the phone, right? Or do you?”

You roll your eyes and fumble around for your sunglasses in your coat pocket. “No, Izz, I don’t. Maybe Stu talks to him sometimes, I don’t know.”

“But you an’ Amy don’t.”

“We don’t,” you bite back. “Why so many questions?”

“I–“ Izzy starts and then rescinds, thinking over what he wants to say. “I was just always curious, I guess. Weird dynamic.”

“What, beating your kids is a weird dynamic?” You meant it lightheartedly, but when you glance over at Izzy he looks a little uncomfortable, like he feels guilty. You wrestle one handed with your sunglasses and fit them on your face. “I’m jokin’, Izz,” you shrug. “I don’t know. As much as I’d like to fulfill your sick fuckin’ curiosities...”

Izzy snorts, and you give him a wry smile. “I don’t know how much I can tell you that you don’t already know.” That’s another lie, but you guess those parts of the story aren’t yours to tell. Sure, you got slapped around a bit, but you were gonna be a nightmare of a kid anyway. When you think of it like that, you always feel inclined to forgive your stepfather. Then you remember the things he put your sister through and the guilt that swallows you for forgetting feels like ice running through your veins. 

The four of you – your sister, your brother, your stepfather – are bonded together now, even without your mother to mediate, by the multiple skeletons in each of your respective closets.

“That’s fair,” Izzy shrugs.

“He was askin’ after you,” you say, eyes on the road. “Light me a cig?”

“Hm, sure,” Izzy fumbles round in your pack of shitty rolled cigarettes and lights up. Through the cig in his mouth, he mumbles, “what was he sayin’?”

“I jus’ told him I was here seein’ you. Asked how you were doin’.”

“I was doin’ better three days ago.”

“Shut the fuck up,” you deadpan and Izzy laughs under his breath, holding the cigarette out for you. He exhales a long stream of smoke as you take it. 

“Christ, this is a nice ass car,” he says dreamily, and when you take your eyes off the road to glance in his direction he’s resting his head on the back of the seat, eyes closed, wind blowin’ through his hair, sunshine lighting it up a bright light brown. He cuts it awful short these days, but it still curls just round his jaw and the nape of his neck. 

“Think you’ll ever grow your hair out again?”

Izzy’s eyes flicker open. When he turns to  
you, your eyes are back on the road.

“Uh,” he subconsciously drags a hand through it. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” He shifts round in his seat so he’s faces you a little more, one leg crossed over the other; he’s always sat like that. Weirdly feminine. “You’ve cut yours.” He says it like it’s some obscure fact, but he’s right. It dusts your shoulders.

“Yeah,” you shake your head and shrug. “Got too long.”

“Mm,” he agrees, or disagrees, somewhat lazily. “Where we headed, by the way?”

“Ain’t got no fuckin’ idea,” you murmur. “You wanna get lunch or somethin’?”

“Sure. Drive on into town. I know a nice place.”

Izzy directs you to a small Vietnamese cafe in the centre of town, and pushes the buttons on your stereo like a curious toddler. He rescinds when he catches your aggressive side glances, put continues to turn the dial of the radio. When he finds a station he likes, he leans back in his seat and enjoys the ride.

“I can see why you drove so long in this,” he muses, eyes closed and head back. “I could forget anythin’ if I stayed here.”

“Yeah, well, that’s ‘cause you ain’t fuckin’ dr-“ you turn to tell him off for being so wistful, but something stops you. An’ you can’t pinpoint exactly what it is because you’d need a couple seconds to stare longer and figure it out, and those are seconds that you need to spend with your eyes on the road, but goddamn. If it wasn’t somethin’ about him, the passenger seat of your convertible, sunbrown and peaceful, lips slightly parted with a pleasured tone to his usually dull as shit voice. 

“‘Cause I ain’t fuckin’ what?”

“‘Cause you ain’t fuckin’ driving,” you clarify. Swallowing any and all ideas you just had in your head.

“I don’t mind driving,” he says with a lot of sauce, and you nip that straight in the bud. You lift your sunglasses from over your eyes and stare at him.

“No way in hell am I lettin’ you drive it.”

“Hey, now, I never said–”

“No way in _hell_ , Izzy.”

Per Izzy’s directions, you eventually pull down a side street. The cafe is small, empty, and so very to Izzy’s tastes that it makes you want to scream. It’s your own damn fault for comin’ to see him though; can you complain when you end up sandwiched between Izzy and the Izzy adjacent?

The bell chimes when you enter, and you take a seat by the window.

“They do nice filter coffee here,” Izzy leans lazily on his hand as he scans the menu.

“If I have another coffee, Izzy, I’ll go catatonic.”

He smiles. “What’ll it be then?”

“Motherfucker, I ain’t even looked at the menu, hold your fuckin’ horses, yeah?” You lean over and grab an ashtray from the neighbouring table. “Don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

He waves his hands dismissively and looks dreamily out the window as you light up. You puff away casually as you scan the menu, your stomach clearly not satisfied from the terrible breakfast you both made for yourselves and rumbling at everything you read. You barely notice when you instinctively hold out your cigarette, offering it to Izzy. You notice however, when he takes it, brushing your fingers, and you look up to see him take a long drag.

“I hate rolls,” he inspects his own handiwork.

“Remind me to buy a pack of marlboro or somethin’ before we head home,” you keep the conversation rollin’ but your eyes flick from him to the cigarette, somehow enthralled by how he’s smokin’ it, by how he took it, by how he’s lookin’ right now.

A young waitress comes over to take your drink order; Izzy looks at you and gestures. “Coffee?” He asks you. “Or no?”

You rub the back of your neck. “Uh,” you scan the menu frantically. You look up at him. “What would you recommend?”

He looks surprised. “I– They do a nice tea, if that’s your thing.”

“Sure, I’ll have that,” you lean back in your seat and he half laughs, repeating your order to the waitress. 

“Trippin’?” He smiles, ashing the cig and passing it back to you. You take a long drag, hyper aware of the wetness of the tip.

“Balls,” you shake your head. “Old man asked if I wanted coffee, what can you say to that, man?”

“Um,” he blinks, unsure if it’s a trick question. “No?”

You snort. “Nah, not to him.” You smoke away. “Weird how little things like that never leave you, right?”

“I guess,” he shrugs, leaning in. He does this when he’s interested. Leans right on in. “They’re your parents, man. I read an article once about how all you really are is half your parents an’ half the environment you grew up in.”

“Christ,” you look up, disgusted. “What the fuck are you doin’ readin’ articles?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah, an’ I’m choosing to ignore it.”

He laughs throatily. The waitress brings your drinks and places a rich, black coffee in front of Izzy and a perfumey pink tea in front of you. She takes your food order – something small – and you thank her.

You take a long sip of your tea while Izzy starts rambling on about nature versus nurture or what the fuck ever, an’ you zone out a little bit.

Half your parents. You’re half o’ what your parents put you through, for sure.

You feel conflicted when you think about how easy it was to walk into that house and sit at the goddamn table, amongst your mother’s things. Are you half of one parent or half of the other? Physically, you’re your mama’s son. For sure. Same sharp eyes, same red hair, there’s always been somethin’ feminine about you that you can only attribute to her. She had fucking genes of steel. That red hair came out fighting in all three of you.

You suppose you’ve got a little of her heart in you. She was sensitive, naïve, forever emotional; you are sensitive but in a different way, because it grew with you and you grew precariously. So it’s still there, but where your mother would be sensitive to people shouting at her or whatever, you’re sensitive to... Christ, you don’t know what.

Sunlight beams through the cafe window and frames Izzy’s head as he lazily keeps talking about god knows what. Your sensitivity claws at your stomach, trying to crawl up through your lungs and your oesophagus, into your throat and out of your mouth ready to spill out onto the table in front of you.

You’re sensitive to beautiful men. An’ Izzy ain’t as beautiful as he is _Izzy_ , which means he rents a timeshare in your head for free.

Sensitive, just like your mother.

And as you swirl the tea round your cup, absent mindedly, you think of the day you buried her. You and Erin had separated by then, but she still called you that night to see how you were. She still cared. And you held it together the whole day but when you heard her voice you just cried, and she soothed you. You spoke all night long and for those couple hours you wondered how on earth you could stand to lose her the way you were losing her. You were sensitive to her, too. 

“Axl?” Izzy asks for your attention back. Your eyes flick up.

“What?” you find yourself asking.

He blinks. “Man, you been swirlin’ your tea for a fuckin’ minute and a half. What’s up with you?”

You self consciously settle your cup down on the table. You go to tell him you’re fine, but then you wonder where the point is in that. “Thinkin’ ‘bout what you said before. And thinkin’ ‘bout my mom.”

Izzy’s face softens, and you see him respond to you telling the truth. He ain’t always appreciate it but he shows it when he does. “What happened?”

“What happened when?” You sip your now lukewarm tea. “Oh, with Stephen? Nah, we just...made small talk.” You frown. “He still ain’t cleared out the house, you know.”

“Hm?”

“He ain’t cleared out mom’s stuff.” You murmur into your cup. “It’s exactly how she left it. Piles of her stuff everywhere. Dust on her armchair. How can you live like that?”

“Creepy,” Izzy narrows his eyes. You look up at him, and for whatever reason, you burst out laughing. He looks confused as fuck as you dissolve into giggles.

“It is fuckin’ creepy,” you grin, covering your mouth. “It’s so fuckin’ creepy, Izzy, fuckin’ hell, you’re makin’ me laugh over my own mama dyin’, what’s wrong with you?”

That makes Izzy snort. You sit there in the empty cafe dissolving into adolescent giggles, holding your mouths, and you spill your heart out to him about how much you hater sitting in that haunted house, at the kitchen table, next to her address books and reading glasses and the ghost of her sensitivity.

The waitress brings your food over and it appears that your laughter is contagious, because she bites back a huge, innocent grin and giggles when you thank her.

Christ. You an’ Izzy laugh all afternoon.


	6. Sunday Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Where’s that fuckin’ ball?” You laugh. You shift your elbow and jaunt his whole body forward, spinning the both of you round. “I’m gonna stand here an’ bounce it into your big fuckin’ head over an’ over ‘til I see a dent.”_
> 
> On Sunday Evening, Axl's car gets scratched and his luck runs out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally caught up with myself so any new chapters here will be coming at the same time as those over on rf- and apologies to anyone still waiting on that one lol, i've just moved back to uni and things have been a bit hectic on my end. hope everyones staying safe.

You slam the car door shut, stalking round to the passenger side and pointing at Izzy ferociously.

“If you so much as _scratch_ this motherfuckin’ car–“

“Man, Axl, you worry too fuckin’ much.” He rolls his eyes as you pass each other and you toss him the keys to the Allante. 

After you’d left the cafe, newly bonded over the untimely passing of your late mother, you’d taken the long way out of town, listening to the radio, cruising around lazily and trying to tune out Izzy _begging_ you to let him drive the goddamn car, _just for a minute, man, come on._

And shit, if the desperation in Izzy’s voice didn’t sound as sweet to you as anything, but the fact that it was directed entirely towards your car keys kind of ruined it for you.

Like a petulant child, he continued, and when you got back onto the old country lanes in the outskirts of town you slammed on the brakes and said motherfuckin’ _fine!_

“Be careful,” you tell him as you slip uneasily into the passenger seat. “Be careful. Be careful. Be careful. Be careful.”

“Sorry, you want me to be what?”

“ _Careful._ ” You hiss, humouring him. “You’re gonna be careful, Izzy, ‘cause if anything happens to this car I will chase you out into them corn fields, so far you can’t find your fuckin’ way back, and I will leave you to _die there_.”

“I know my way round here better than you,” he muses, buckling himself up - goddamn, you’d think he’d better - and you narrow your eyes.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a hick motherfucker.”

“An’ you ain’t?”

“Hell no, I ain’t.”

“You still talk like one though,” he teases you coolly and you almost punch the dashboard in front of you before you remember the airbag.

“In your dreams,” you bite down, self consciously enunciating your words. Izzy just laughs and turns the ignition.

“So, am I driving us home?”

“You’re drivin’ us to the end of the goddamn street,” you remind him.

“Gotcha,” he says. “Driving us home,” he confirms under his breath. You almost go to punch him on the arm but he’s already driving and he don’t need your help hittin’ a fence.

“You ain’t fuckin’ funny at all,” you say sourly, putting your sunglasses back down on your face, trying to ignore Izzy going faster and faster, but you can’t help but watch nauseously as he fucks with the radio while he attempts to steer. 

“Man, just- you look where you’re goin’ an’ I’ll do this.” You start flipping through stations, and then you hear a soft jangly country tune that you vaguely recognise.

“Oh, great tune,” Izzy says without thinking.

You freeze when you realise what you’re listening to; when Izzy figures it out, he roars with laughter.

“I’m changing the station,” you tell him, and Izzy slaps your hand away from the radio.

“Leave it on!” He laughs so hard you’re worried he’s gonna swerve the car.

“I’m changing it!” You snap. 

“You change it, an’ I’ll plow this car right on into that field.”

The song in question is _Til I Kissed You_ by the Everly Brothers.

“ _Never had you on my mind,_ ” Izzy sings loudly, laughing, throwing his head back and smacking your hand away from the radio. “ _Now you’re there all the time–_ ”

“Eyes on the fucking road!”

“ _Never knew what I missed ‘til I kissed-_ ”

“Izzy, you ain’t fuckin’ funny! You ain’t never gonna be fuckin’ funny! Watch where you’re going!”

“Man, I ain’t that bad of a fuckin’ driver! Fuck you!”

And you and Izzy wrestle for the radio, him guarding the power button while you try to drop the volume down to zero. 

_Watch the road,_ you keep tellin’ him, but you can tell he’s bein’ careful the way he’s driving. Would be more careful if he weren’t viciously using one hand and one eye to spite an’ fight you with your ex father-in-law’s music, but he ain’t gonna crash while he can help it.

In the end, you let him have it and you sulk into the passenger seat, burning holes into the steering wheel with the sheer laser force of your glare. You loosen up a little when he carefully pulls onto a main road with no one else around, and lean your elbow over the side of the door. You stare out at the expansive empty fields and big blue sky with sharp, fluffy, detailed clouds as big as mountains. And the air hits your face every few seconds in a way that stops you breathin’ and you can’t lie, it feels like heaven.

“You can go faster if you want,” you say sleepily, content with his driving skills. When you side eye him, he looks spectacularly uncomfortable, sat up dead straight and gripping the steering wheel like he’ll die if he lets go. “Jesus, Izzy. You can relax a little, you know.”

You can visibly see him slump with relief and you almost laugh out loud. 

“ _Mm, you got a way about ya,_ ” you find yourself humming along to the song, eyes fluttering closed, sinking into your seat. Trying to block out any intrusive reminders that Izzy’s driving your car.

“This is a fucking _nice ride_ ,” you hear him say for the millionth fuckin’ time and you feel him speed up, and goddamn if life ain’t just heaven here in the sun.

“That’s why I fuckin’ bought it,” you murmur dreamily, eyes still shut behind your sunglasses, and you eagerly wait for one of Izzy’s sour quips but it never comes. Opening your eyes, you see him glancing eagerly towards you. “Motherfucker, look at the road, not at me.” You say without thinking, and he looks embarrassed.

“You’re dreamin’,” he shakes his head. You recline in the seat again, arm over the side of the door, feeling gusts of air in your palms. Staring out over the fields. Those skies lookin’ as big as ever.

“I been in the city too long,” you say forlornly.

“You think?”

“For sure,” you muse, pursing your lips. “I’m starting to give this place more credit than it’s worth.”

“You’re learnin’ to take a step back,” he shrugs. “The world ain’t just your experiences.”

“But it feels like my experiences are the world,” you truthfully counter, in a way you find yourself doing too much lately. “An’ I don’t feel much like lingerin’ on ‘em, so...”

“You’re holding yourself back,” he says softly. “There’s a great beautiful fuckin’ world out here, look.”

“Ain’t you fuckin’ hear what I just said?” 

Izzy casts an unimpressed side glance. “Yeah, I heard you. Fine, I’ll stop fuckin’ talkin’, an’ you can head back to Los fuckin’ Angeles an’ choke to death on the fumes.”

“You severely underestimate my lungs,” you reach into your pocket and wave your cigarette carton, before lighting up. “You want one?”

He hesitates. “No,” he shakes his head firmly. “Thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

Then you go quiet, listening faithfully to that vile song on the radio, and he says, “…make yourself some new experiences.”

“Suppose that’s what I’m doing here,” you puff away and play with your sunglasses, lifting them up and down over your eyes, viewing the fields in technicolour and then in sepia. 

“What do you want for dinner?” He expertly changes the topic, and you guess that the negative energy radiating from you is _like, totally fuckin’ with his aura, man,_ or some shit. 

You push your sunglasses over your head, raking your hair back, squinting against the sun. “Chinese,” you tell him.

“Oh, so my cooking ain’t good enough for you.”

“Is everything gonna turn into a fuckin’ goddamn fight with you?”

“I’m joking, you fuckin’ asshole,” he shakes his head. “Sounds perfect. Didn’t wanna cook anyway.”

“Me, you an’ the takeout menu,” you say. “It’s a date.”

He snorts. “How fast can I make this thing go?” He says all of a sudden, looking over to you for permission to destroy your car. As if he’s a dog sitting in front of a sirloin steak. Or as if he’s been staring at a plate of junk for an hour, waiting for the go ahead. He glances at you and clarifies: “How fast am I _allowed_ to make this thing go?”

You pause, holding your cigarette close to your mouth. “Seventy.”

“I’m doin’ sixty already,” he complains.

“Man, how long is this fuckin’ road? You can do whatever won’t buck you to the end of it an’ light us up like god knows what.”

He laughs viciously. “Man, you _are_ a fuckin’ hick.”

You scowl at him, and he laughs harder when he sees you. Inside your head, you vow never to speak a sentence to Izzy again. 

You manage ten seconds of sulky silence before you get bored, and then you tell him, “do ninety.” 

When you glance over at him, he’s trying not to smile. “Fuck yeah,” he says.

So you take the longest route home, per Izzy’s demand, as he pushes the Allante as far as he can down dusty country lanes. The anxiety you have for your beautiful car is suppressed by a fierce wind in your face, and you find yourself laughing like a child. Izzy, to your left, looks like he’s having the time of his life. You allow yourself to enjoy being driven around. 

You used to drive round town like this in the summer when you were kids, the two of you an’ some others. An’ you’d pull into a field and yank all the door and windows and the trunk open and share a fat joint in the back seat while the radio played. You don’t care much for the country, an’ you didn’t care much for the kids you were with, but you share the same sentiments now as you did back then: life is heaven in the sun. An’ Indiana smells different in the fall and it ain’t as warm as it was yesterday but for _some reason_ you’re still hot in the face.

Izzy slows down as you begin to recognise the roads he turns down, and hear the leaves crunching under the tires. 

“Good enough of a drive for you?” You flick your cigarette out into the road.

“Sure,” he gives you a funny smile, “thanks for letting me drive it.”

“I guess I owed you,” you shrug.

As you pull into his driveway, your body is still strumming a vibrant chord of adrenaline. You find that you can’t stop smiling. You find that seemingly he can’t either. But as you get out of the car, you see him slam his door and watch as slowly, slowly, the colour drains from his face and his smile fades.

“What?” your own grin disappears. He just looks at you and shakes his head, mouth opening but no words coming out. Your stomach sinks. “Oh God, Izzy, what did you do?”

You march round to his side of the car and see a small, small, tiny dent in the bottom of the door.

“I’m so sorry, Ax, I don’t even- I didn’t even notice-“ He just shakes his head apologetically. You just stare at the dent as he stammers.

You look up at him, ready to snap, and something about the nervousness on his face stops you. Shaking his head, mumbling apologies, brows knitted, and you just wanna take him and tell him how little you give a fuck.

“It’s okay,” you blurt out, transfixed by the concern he has for something you care about. At least, that’s what you’re assuming, ‘cause somehow you can’t see him so wound up by your empty threats of being left for dead in a corn field.

“I’ll pay for the repairs,” he rubs his head. “Jesus, I’m so sorry, man, I don’t even know how that could’ve happened.”

Against your better judgement, you take him by the shoulders. “It’s cool, Izz. Relax. It’s alright.” And it sure as shit _ain’t_ alright but you can’t make yourself be mad at him. 

You wonder about your mama’s hereditary sensitivity again. The same sensitivity that makes you susceptible to adoring every part of Izzy, and that includes his terrible, terrible driving. And that includes the endearing vulnerability scratched onto his face when he’s begging for your forgiveness.

Okay, maybe he’s not quite _begging for your forgiveness._ But he’s genuinely upset and sorry and, well, it turns you on.

“Accidents happen,” you throw your arms up, unable to wipe the incredulous look from your face, letting apologetic spiel fall out of your own mouth. “It can be fixed. You were careful, I can’t hold it against you.”

He looks on at you confused. “Christ,” he shakes his head, narrowing his eyes, suspicious of how collected you’re being. “You’re a funny one. I’m paying for the repairs. Ain’t takin’ no for an answer.”

And he brushes past you somewhat coldly, dropping the keys into your hand.   
Hot and cold, hot and cold, Jesus, Izzy, don’t you get goddamn tired?

You stare at the damage for a minute longer, thinking _goddamn, I knew this would happen._ He had one fucking job, an’ that was to not dent, scratch, or crash your fuckin’ car and the motherfucker couldn’t even do that. And mean-fucking-while, you’re soft in the heart because he said he was sorry. Man, what’s wrong with you? 

“Christ,” you say out loud, looking up from the dent and staring into the distance. 

“You coming in?” He hangs in the doorway and calls out to you.

“I’m calculating how much you owe me,” you snap at him, gathering your bite back. You follow him back into the house, cursing at him as he holds the door open for you. “Who do you think you are? Richard fuckin’ Petty? I bet you wish you were Richard fuckin’ Petty. I’m gonna take a baseball bat to that fuckin’ dog shit Mercedes o’ yours, see how you like it.”

As you storm past him, you can see him smiling again out of the corner of your eye. You think that maybe, after all these years, you’ve just this second sussed him out: he seems to prefer you angry and ablaze and calling him names than bein’ comforting and understanding like you accidentally were before. Maybe he’s got some kind of weird kink. Then again, if Izzy was suddenly acting all peaches and cream to you, you’d be suspicious as shit too. An’ yet you’re choking on your words, ‘cause you’re scared about how your instinct was to absolve him of all responsibility, and the dire implications that that has for you. 

“I’ll send you an invoice,” your voice has an explicit crack down the middle. He nods as he passes you and moves into the kitchen.

You hear him run the faucet and decide that you need some space away from him, and he could do with the same. So you slink away upstairs to the guest room and sit yourself down on the bed.

You take a deep breath, then you grab the pillow and throw yourself on your back and hold the pillow over your face, groaning into it, attempting to smother yourself. And you stay like that for… a while. Jesus, shit. Goddamn.

You hurl the pillow at the wall, ‘cause usually you’d punch something but this ain’t your house an’ you don’t have the energy, quite frankly. You huff and your gaze is drawn to a pair of beady eyes lingering in the doorway. Ripley stares at you.

“What?” You hiss at her. She stays staring at you, and then she saunters into the guest room, sniffing at random pieces of furniture. You watch her for a minute and rub your forehead, then you shrug your jacket off and fetch the pillow from the other end of the room. No use acting like a goddamn teenage girl about it. When you turn around, Ripley’s face is buried in your bag. She looks like she’s about to fall the fuck in. The bag jerks around under her snout comically.

“Oh, no you fuckin’ don’t,” you swipe forward and take her up in your arms, trying to shake a pair of Calvins from her mouth. She drops them, eventually, after much cursing on your end. Your reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe unit shows you somewhat moody, red in the cheeks with the world’s stupidest lookin’ dog in your arms. 

“What the fuck do we look like?” You say out loud to her. She licks her nose as she hangs lazily. “Huh? Do we look fuckin’ ridiculous? Yes, we do. Yes we do.” You start cooing aggressively. She snorts in response. “Are you bored like me? I’ll bet you fuckin’ are if you came up here. You know I ain’t gonna give you nothin’ but a kick up your goddamn ass.” You sit on the edge of the bed and settle her in your lap, and she relaxes as you begin to pet her.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here,” you suddenly confess to her, dropping your voice. “Think I’ve just gone an’ caused a lot of bullshit for no reason.”

Ripley looks around as if she’s been cornered. Then you realise you’re talking to a dog and you drop it with a scowl. “Then again, what the fuck would you know?” You frown. Ripley sits up in your lap, wobbling on your knees, and licks her lips anxiously.

“You’re gonna keep me company,” you decide, and you pull her into your arms and stand up. “Because I can’t bear to be by my fuckin’ self these days.”

Ripley wriggles in your grip but soon relaxes and you find yourself walking aimlessly around the house, snooping and poking your fat head where it’s not wanted. Upstairs, you study Izzy’s bedroom in the light of the late afternoon, bed unmade, books in the corner, clothes on the chair, yeah, it’s still him.

“You reckon the fucker needs a maid?” You ask Ripley. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t answer.

You find a room you’ve never seen before, clearly where he keeps his instruments and does his work: old guitars up on the walls, many of which you recognise. There’s a piano next to a potted plant - you childishly press down on a high key.

You find a room that seems like Annika’s home gym; you make that deduction from a set of ladies’ sportswear hanging over the radiator, clearly forgotten to be put away.

You find another guest room, significantly smaller than the one you were sent to, with what you assume to be Annika’s fresh laundry set on top of the single bed. So, they’ve been sleeping separately? 

You head down the stairs and stick your head into some kind of office left of the stairs, opposite the living room, with potted plants dripping over the desk and hundreds of books the shelves. A glance shows you that many are Annika’s rather than Izzy’s; journals detailing marine life in the Indian, the Atlantic, the Arctic oceans. Someone’s been reading some garbage Ray Bradbury shit, oh, that’s Izzy for sure. But the rest of it is definitely Annika’s.

You expertly avoid Izzy during all this; you don’t know where he’s gone to. An’ moving around helps take your mind off things. There’s nothin’ else to do anyway. But after you’ve circled the house for the third time with Ripley wriggling in your arms, you burst through the front door and find Izzy stretched out on the porch swing, plucking lazily on his guitar. You throw the dog down on the floor and she scurries away from you, lest she be scooped up again.

“I’m bored,” you announce.

“Okay,” Izzy nods, and he strums you a solemn chord. “And that’s my problem, because…”

“Because I’m about to get real fuckin’ annoying.”

He snorts. “Try me,” his eyes flick upwards in a way that’s almost seductive, tellin’ you that he’s got a doctorate in _Axl Management_ an’ he’ll take whatever you can dish out. 

You lean against the porch door and eye him down. That soft late afternoon breeze comes through, rustling your hair, and Izzy’s eyes soften. He looks over at the empty fields opposite his house and looks like he’s either thinking of something, or trying to think of anything but you, and absentmindedly twiddles some abstract notes.

“You can sing me a tune if you like,” he teases you, and then in a fit of compulsion plucks the same string six times in a row.

You grunt in response and lean yourself over the wooden railing. “Yeah, I’ll sing, I’ll sing along to whatever fuckin’... Cat Stevens, Peter Paul an’ Mary, non- conformist hippie shit it is you play out here on your own.”

“I know you’re makin’ fun o’ me but I’ve had Joni Mitchell stuck in my head all damn day.”

You whip your head round and eye him warily. “No way in hell.” 

He snorts. “Knew you’d fuckin’ say that. How’d I know you were gonna fuckin’ say that?”

You ignore him. “How ‘bout _you_ sing me something?” You turn around and lean your elbows on the railing, giving him a fruity sort of look.

“Sure, but I can’t hit those Joni notes like you can,” he tips his head towards you.

“Joni can’t hit them Joni notes,” you deadpan, and he laughs. You pat yourself down lookin’ for your cigarettes. “Let me have a smoke an’ maybe I’ll sing you a bar of a fuckin’... Dylan song or some shit, if it gets you off my back.”

“Hey, man, _you_ were the one who marched out here mouthin’ off about bein’ bored, I was jus’ tryna help.” Another dry strum. “God knows why I fuckin’ try, huh?”

You roll your eyes, still rummaging through your pockets. “Shit, I think I left my smokes upstairs, goddamn.” You move to go indoors but Izzy fixes you with a look, an’ you fix him with one right back. “Is it even worth it?” You find yourself wondering out loud. He shakes his head. You shrug and slink back to the railing and silence falls between you, save for the sound of Izzy beginning to play another obscure little tune and the trees rustling softly around you both. 

You play with your hands nervously. Because you’re nervous, you’re nervous about feelin’ something you might not want to feel, something that you just aren’t ready to confront. Exactly what that is isn’t unknown to you, but you refuse to acknowledge it. You don’t have the heart these days.

Izzy’s soft playing, however, keeps you grounded. ‘Cause he is still Izzy, you keep telling yourself that, an’ Izzy for a long time was the gravity you always needed. It’s foolish to think that you still have the relationship you used to. It’s ridiculous to keep living in the past, but it’s even more ridiculous to keep running from it.

Then Izzy’s seemingly random playing falls into something distinctly recognisable. You snort incredulously, hanging your head over the railing, and groaning. 

“Sittin’ in a park in Paris, France,” Izzy’s lazy, scratchy vocals coax you out of your hiding place. You turn around to give him a sour look and he stares at you expectantly with a big fat fuckin’ smile on his face. He continues, “readin’ the news an’ it sure looks bad.”

You throw a cautious glance around you, huntin’ for neighbours, before you humour him. “They won’t give peace a chance,” you say rather than sing. You straighten your back and clear your throat, and then you roll your eyes. “Man, I ain’t know the fuckin’ words.”

“The fuck are you talkin’ about? You jus’ fuckin’ sang ‘em.”

You lick your lips and enter into another staring match. Izzy’s intense gaze draws words out of your mouth in a self conscious half tune, “just a dream some of us had... um, da da da, some lands to see...” you trail off, ‘cause you ain’t lying, you don’t know the damn words. You narrow your eyes, as if you’re squinting to see the lyrics in the distance.

“This is poor,” Izzy heckles you as he continues to play and causes you to trip over the only words you do know.

“Man, fuck you,” you narrow your eyes.

“Ain’t you meant to be some kind of front man?” He cackles, still strumming, and you curse him over and over as he laughs at you.

“Ain’t _you?_ ” You sneer and he snorts.

“You’re always deflectin’,” he shakes his head. “Always deflecting. Listen, if you’ve lost your nerve these days, if you’re embarrassed you don’t sound as good as you used to, I understand-“

“California,” you deadpan, cutting him off, an’ when you’ve got his attention you throw your head back; “ _California_ ,” you lament, in a long howl of falsetto that echoes over his porch and into the air. So loud and shrill that Ripley begins to bark excitedly and jump around your ankles. Izzy stops strumming almost immediately and you glance back over to him. “What? That’s the fuckin’ song, ain’t it? Don’t tell me I got it wrong.”

He blinks at you with a funny look on his face and composes himself quickly. “Yeah, yeah. See what I mean? Fuckin’ Joni notes. I ain’t hittin’ those.”

But you cling to that moment and the idea that your singing could pull him away from his icy bravado just for a second. An’ you cling to the knowledge that your voice is the part of you that he likes best or, at least, a part of you that he likes.

“That fuckin’ dog whistle of yours,” Izzy nods towards Ripley. You curse, kicking her away.

“Fuck’s sake,” you flinch away from her, “this is all your fault.”

“My fault,” Izzy guffaws. “You’re the one out here howlin’ like the leader of the goddamn pack.”

“Because you made me!” You look up incredulously, and Izzy bursts out laughing. You shake your head, trying to hide a grin when you realise you’ve just exposed yourself as caring about what Izzy thinks of you. “Man, eat shit.”

Ripley, now with a new burst of energy, runs down into the drive and dives back up, scurries around your ankles and drops a disgusting soggy tennis ball caked in mud at your feet. She looks up at you intently.

Now you’ve become well acquainted with Ripley this weekend, and you can sense what’s coming.

“Don’t you dare,” you warn her, but she ignores you and lets out the most high pitched, ear drum quaking yip you’ve ever heard. You cover your ears and Izzy groans.

“What?” He snaps at her as she rushes to scratch at the peeling wooden frame of Izzy’s porch swing. She then half heartedly takes the frame into her mouth for no good reason at all, suddenly remembers her agenda, and then steps back and breathes in before she lets go of another loud, piercing yip. You both groan again.

“I hate when she gets fuckin’ like this,” Izzy slams his guitar down against the wall and sits up, resting his arms on his knees and leaning in to look her in the eye. “What - the fuck - do you - want?” He enunciates his words, nodding his head, like he’s talkin’ to a damn toddler.

It’s at this point Treader, unceremoniously nudges the porch door back open with his head, and falls to his stomach at the top of the steps. He lets out a low whine and moodily stares out at Izzy’s driveway. Ripley, meanwhile, fetches the ball from your feet and drops it at Izzy’s for emphasis.

“Obviously she wants to play,” you say and Izzy looks at you like you’re stupid. 

He sighs. “If I throw it,” he stares you down, “she ain’t gonna leave me alone all damn night.”

“I don’t think she’s gonna leave you alone ‘til you do throw it.”

“You’d think,” he frowns and turns back to Ripley. “Maybe I should take you on another walk, huh? An’ tire you out so you never whine again.”

Your ears perk up. “I’d be up for that,” you tell him.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” he narrows his eyes.

“Yeah, well, I’d be up for it. You know. Walkin’ ‘em both. If you want.”

Izzy rolls his eyes. You frown, wondering where this sour mood of his has come from, an’ you’re about to tell him _forget it, stay out here, whatever_ and slink off to give him his space, when he stands up and cocks his head.

“Because I’m bored,” you say instead, for emphasis, but then you realise that that makes you sound like you care too much so you shrug to play it off. Very cool, Axl.

Izzy looks you up and down reluctantly for another couple of seconds. 

“Get your boots on,” he sighs as he slips in through the porch door. He whistles as he goes, summoning Treader, who lazily follows.

“Yes, sir,” you call after him. He ignores you and you’re glad, ‘cause you don’t know why the fuck you decided to say that. 

“Grab a jacket or a jumper or something,” he calls after you as you dive up the stairs. “I don’t know how long we’ll be out for. Might get a little cold when the sun goes down. I’ll meet you out here in five.”

You run upstairs and throw on the red sweater from last night, a new item of clothing you’ve become rather keen on. Even if it ain’t Izzy’s. Especially if it ain’t Izzy’s. 

You pull on the old pair of boots you came in, the only shoes you brought, and the boxy silhouette reflected in the mirror makes you grimace. But you do as Izzy says and you meet him on the porch where he raises an eyebrow when he sees what you’re wearing. But he keeps his mouth shut. Fair’s fair. 

He ain’t leashed them. He sees you looking. “We’re only going over there,” he points to the field opposite his house. You nod sagely.

“What if they just run off and never come back?” You ask as he starts making his way down the drive. The dogs follow him obediently, Ripley with the tennis ball in her mouth and Treader moving sluggishly. 

“I’d have no complaints,” he calls back at you. You hurry after him. 

He hops a low fence and Treader follows suit and together they wade into a field of tall grass, reeds, dandelions and wildflowers. Ripley’s too short to hop it so you reluctantly scoop her up as you step over and she worms her way out of your arms as soon as she can, and all you can see as she bounds after Izzy and Treader is the rustling of the grass.

“Motherfucker, you gonna wait for me?” You call out. He turns, half amused.

“What? You said you wanted to go for a walk,” he eyes you warily as you approach, grimacing as you make clunky steps through shin length grass.

“A walk, yeah, not a run,” you cast him a look and he snorts. You roll your eyes and fall into step alongside him.

“What’s up with you?” Izzy announces suddenly. He walks with his hands in his pockets and the dogs swirling round his feet, like some Tom Waits vaudevillian hobo motherfucker.

“What?”

“You been weird ever since we got back earlier. Practically disappeared as soon as we got home. Is it about the car?”

“I...” You stare at him. “No, it ain’t. Sorry. Just my head.” You ain’t lying. But for some reason, the idea that you can say that so openly to him makes you feel worse. “I’m thinkin’.”

“You’re thinkin’,” he echoes you.

“I’m thinkin’,” you confirm. “‘Bout how I’m gonna move on from here.” You wade through the thick grass and your fingers tighten around the sleeves of your sweater. “You know. Last day blues an’ all that.”

He snorts. “Enjoyed yourself?”

“Enjoyed my damn self?” You stop in your tracks. “Between you fuckin’ with my head an’ fuckin’ with my car? Havin’ to make pleasantries with _him_ down the fuckin’ street? Fightin’ red hot guilt at my being down here anyway? Trip from _hell_ , Izzy. Two star review.”

He smiles. “Two stars, huh?”

“Yeah,” you straighten your back and clear your throat and throw on your best yuppie banker impersonation. “Customer service leaves much to be desired.”

His tongue trails the bottom of his teeth as he stifles a laugh. “Hey, man, you got a clean room an’ three square meals.”

“That I did,” you tip your head in his direction. “Maybe I can be convinced to higher your rating in place of, uh, a fuckin’ gift card, or some shit.”

“I... could offer you a complimentary stay at our Hollywood branch,” he sways as he walks, clearly enjoying your sick little role play.

“I wasn’t aware o’ this second branch,” you feign interest.

“It’s really for the most exclusive clientele, I assure you.”

“You’re having way too much fun with this,” you drop your act and shake your head while he laughs viciously. “Huh. So you’ve got a place in Hollywood. Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shakes his head and purses his lips. “I’m never there. Should probably sell it but,” he shrugs, “it’s not like I can’t afford it.”

“I thought you hated it down there.”

“Oh, I fuckin’ despise it these days. But like I said,” he shrugs again. “Nice to...have the option.”

“You got places anywhere else?” You ask him, genuinely curious.

He shakes his head. You step over an extra long clump of reeds. “Your damn dogs are gonna get ticks out here,” you tell him. “Motherfucker, _I’m_ gonna get ticks out here.”

“Shit, probably,” he shrugs. “I’ll hose you down outside later.”

“Funny,” you bite back. He smirks to himself. You continue to wade through the tall grass, only now you’re acutely aware of every tiny itch on your legs and arms. When you’ve marched yourself far enough into the meadow to be satisfied, Izzy takes the vile little ball from Ripley’s salivating mouth and launches it into the sky.

You nod towards his arm. “Trying out for the Hoosiers next season?”

He smirks as he stretches it across his chest. “That’s a million dollar throw, sugar.”

You stare at him and then you scoff. You can hear scrapping and yapping in the far distance as the two dogs fight for the ball. “How do you know he won’t rip her in two?”

Izzy shrugs. You wait for an actual answer but he just shrugs again. Meanwhile, Treader emerges champion and gallops to Izzy with the ball in his mouth, dropping it at his feet.

“Alright, here we go,” Izzy picks it up and throws it again, perhaps sadly nostalgic for a baseball career that never happened, and once more the dogs fly off. 

“Some throw,” you muse.

“‘Cause I’m picturin’ you at the end of that field,” he deadpans.

“Go to hell,” you snort. “Why waste your energy?”

“Good point,” he turns to you, eyes soft and glittering. The grass rustles as he turns, like he’s controlling the breeze. “You’d probably jus’ come closer if I called.”

“What the fuck did you just say?” You head snaps up and you stare at him in complete shock.

He just smirks weirdly and shakes his head. “I don’t know. Ignore me.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to ignore- man, I don’t know what you think but I am _not_ that far up your ass.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he shakes his head softly and smiles, then turns to look over at the dogs. They bound up, with Ripley carrying the ball and Treader nipping playfully at her heels. Izzy has a brief fight trying to pull the ball from her jowls and while he’s distracted, you pounce. 

“Then what the fuck did you mean, you goddamn clown? If you’re gonna talk trash, say it with your goddamn chest.”

He gives you a final confused look and you wonder if maybe he meant it completely innocently and you’ve just blown it completely out of proportion. 

“Man, I don’t fuckin’ know,” he brushes you off and snatches the soggy ball, before throwing it briefly in the air and catching it with one hand. This sends the dogs crazy and they bark around his legs. “You want a go?” He waves the ball in your direction.

“Pass,” you deadpan, narrowing your eyes, wrapping your arms round yourself and wandering off a little to the left.

“Wait, come here a quick sec,” he calls out to you as he teases the dogs with the ball. You look up and reluctantly tread forward.

“What?” You ask him.

Izzy smirks towards you in the Indiana sunset and as you approach him, with his exquisite aim, he bounces the tennis ball off your head. You nearly hit the ground.

“Motherfucker, _ow_ ,” you shout and he laughs obnoxiously. “That fucking hurt.”

“See, now, that’s what I meant.” He says as he dissolves into self indulgent giggles. You grab the ball and launch it back at him, missing by a good few inches. He grins smugly at you as Ripley and Treader fight for the ball behind him.

“Overarm,” he coaches you. You curse him out.

“Give me that fuckin’ ball,” you snap, diving into the fray to steal it back. You throw it – _overarm_ – and you miss. Again. 

“Asshole, stay still!” You howl stupidly. And he just laughs.

He holds out his arms in a way that, to you, says _well, what are you gonna do about it?_ You tell him what you’re gonna do about it, you tell him exactly what you’re gonna do about it. 

You stride forward and he grins, seeing the annoyance in your face, then he tries to set off behind himself until you grab him by the shirt. Before you can do anything, he shoves you in the chest and sends you flying to the ground, ass first into the grass.

“Fuck you!” You howl as he laughs hard, and you haul yourself up and run after him. You’re chasing him for a solid minute, counting the seconds that you both had to stop ‘cause you were laughing so hard, while your legs ache from having to wade through the thick grass in search of retribution. Some real Dandelion Wine bullshit. 

He uncharacteristically heckles you as he allows you to catch up to him and you both shove each other about some more before he slips out of your grasp.  
Conniving as you are, you settle your hands on your knees as you pretend to catch your breath, feigning mock surrender, and the second Izzy lets his guard down and retreats toward you you pull him into a headlock.

“Got you, fuckin’ motherfucker!” You shout. 

Izzy’s laughter rings out as he attacks your ribcage, desperate to fling you off.

“Man, how fuckin’ old are you? Are you twelve?” He howls.

“Where’s that fuckin’ ball?” You laugh. You shift your elbow and jaunt his whole body forward, spinning the both of you round. “I’m gonna stand here an’ bounce it into your big fuckin’ head over an’ over ‘til I see a dent.”

With giggles still shaking his tiny frame, he launches backward and winds you, sending you flying to the ground. All with the intention of breaking free, so you grab the neck of shirt and pull him down too. You laugh viciously as Izzy makes a choking sound. An’ you’re so caught up in the weirdness of it all, the innocence of it all, that you stupidly forget your company; one small, skittish french bulldog, and one incredibly large, intimidating, loyal german shepherd.

Now, what happens next happens so fast that you don’t even understand what’s happened until you’re thrown on your back. It’s the noise that shocks you alive, the deafening growling, and you realise you’re pinned under a 40kg dog and you can make out Izzy’s vicious screaming in the background, a tune you’ve found to be reserved for only the most serious of situations. You’ve been in enough serious situations to be acquainted with it.

Treader is hauled off you by Izzy, who hoists him up from behind, and is thrown across the field. Izzy launches him onto the grass, kicking him warningly in the side. Treader flinches, sinks into himself, and disappears into the tall grass with his ears down.

“Dumb fuckin’ dog!” Izzy barks after him. He breathes raggedly in that direction for a minute, then turns his attention to you with concern almost physically dripping from his face. “Are you- Christ, man, are you alright?”

Is he talkin’ to you?

You blink, still in shock, winded. You just sit blinking in the dandelions and the reeds as Izzy kneels next to you. Several split seconds of _where am I_ later, Izzy’s hand is on your neck and you’re nodding, batting him away with a limp hand.

“Alright, alright,” you grumble. “I’m fuckin’ fine, man. Leave it.”

“I’m so sorry, Ax- shit, he ain’t never done that to nobody in his _life_.” Izzy’s shaking his head in disbelief, desperate to get his hands on your face and inspect you for bruises. What are you, a motherfuckin’ cantaloupe?

“Izzy,” you silence him, trying to keep your voice steady, trying to regulate your breathing, trying to keep his fucking hands off you. “It’s cool, it ain’t his fault, Izzy, for real.” You shift and Izzy helps you to your feet. 

“I need to see how bad he got you,” he starts for your face again, this time in a way that’s so soft and tender, but pulls back entirely when he sees the scowl that crosses your face.

“I’m fuckin’ _fine_ , man,” you snap, lurching out of his reach. “Why’s it always fuckin’ me that this shit happens to? Goddamn, it’s like he could smell it,” your mouth just runs on autoplay as your brain catches up with your body. You look up, wiping dog spit from your jaw, and see Izzy looking you eagerly up and down.

“Did he catch me or what?” You exasperatedly ask, and you allow Izzy to move forward and take your face in his hands. You almost flinch at the sudden closeness and you goddamn know you’re flushing red like a fuckin’ schoolgirl. You lean your head as far from Izzy’s as possible as he scrutinises your injuries.

“You’ll live,” Izzy murmurs.

Your entire body jolts as he delicately runs his thumb over the graze on your cheek. You tear yourself out of his grasp. That’s too intimate. You can’t do that. No, no, not now, not ever.

“Um,” is all you can say.

You share a very strained look, embarrassed on your part, confused and guilty on his. 

“Fuck, I’m just- I can’t believe it,” he rubs his neck, keeping his hands to himself from now on. “He really never fuckin’ does that.” He casts an accusing glance over at Treader, who sits lookin’ awful sad. 

“That ain’t makin’ me feel any better,” you reply, narrowing your eyes at Treader.

“Too loyal for his own fuckin’ good,” Izzy glances over to him and kneels down, beckoning him over. Treader, in turn, sheepishly trots back up and nudges Izzy’s wrist with his snout, licking all over his hand.

“But he‘s a good boy,” Izzy sighs. While he’s distracted, you run your hand over your cheek and feel the tiny little puncture wound. Ain’t nothin’. He went easy on you. Christ, this is the single worst day you’ve ever had. Well, maybe not, but it’s a strong contender.

“He just attacked me,” you deadpan.

“Yeah,” he smirks. “Ain’t you good, attackin’ Axl like that? Yes, yes you are,” Izzy is now aggressively cooing.

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Did you hear that, boy? What the fuck did he just say to me? Go get him.” Izzy nods in your direction, and Treader just looks at you lazily. Izzy looks at you lazily too.

“C’mon,” he says, reaching to grab the ball and sending Treader into the sunset to search for it. He slams himself backwards, down in the grass. “Sit down. Catch your breath.”

As per his instruction, you slap your happy ass back down into Tick City.

The sun is warm on your face though, and the scent of dry nature is thick in your nose. You let yourself recline, subconsciously mirroring Izzy’s movements because he seems a lot more at home here than you are. 

“You shoulda been a dog in this life,” you tell him. 

“Maybe in the next one,” he smirks. 

Treader runs up to drop the ball in Izzy’s lap and you visibly flinch. Izzy laughs awkwardly.

“You’re good,” he murmurs, shoving Treader’s snout playfully as he flings the ball into the sky once more. “He don’t bi- well, nah, I guess he does bite, don’t he?”

You snort. “Wish he’d put me outta my fuckin’ misery,” you lament. You’re only half joking, but Izzy laughs gracefully like it’s one of the funnier things he’s heard. 

As you both sit in the grass, watching the dogs, he reclines playfully. And then there’s an instance where he glances over to look at you, through brown eyelashes in the late september sun, a little closer than you remember, and you can’t help it.

You literally just told yourself _no, no, not now, not ever._ But you severely overestimated your self discipline.

“God, I’m sorry,” you tell him ahead of time.

“Sorry?” He turns to you. “Man, what the fuck are you-”

You can’t fuckin’ help it no more, and goddamn, if you don’t lean over. If you don’t lean over and kiss him square on the mouth.


	7. Sunday Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Because I don’t know what the fuck to say right now,” he hisses in your face. “Okay? I gotta think- I gotta fucking think now.” He sits himself back in the grass and you shiver in the breeze. “Christ,” he spits out. “Why’d you- why’d you gotta go an’ do a thing like that?”_
> 
> On Sunday night, Axl and Izzy see a fox.

You gotta move quick, ‘cause you’re pretty sure he’ll pull back if you give him even a second to think. And you gotta lean over, ‘cause you’re sat up and he’s laying down, so your hair falls forward as you move.   
Your nose slots in beside his, you push your forehead into his, you press your mouth to his.

And of course, you always wondered what it’d be like. You always wondered what it’d feel like, and his mouth is as soft as anythin’. Anxiety poolin’ in your stomach, your heart poundin’ out of your chest, your own words beatin’ like a drum in your brain: _not now, not ever, not now, not ever, not now, not ever._ That’s what it feels like.

And your skin burns, sears, white hot scorches underneath his touch when he puts his hand on your jaw. 

That’s what it feels like. It feels like _burning_. Burning skin, burning bridges, burning flames of hell licking up through the ground. There’s burning inside your stomach and burning inside your head: it feels wrong and anticlimatic and sad, but it also desperately doesn’t. Christ, you don’t even know what you’re feeling.

You pull away, and he looks back at you, hurt and confused and about ready to snap. For some reason, that’s when it happens for you: a softness around you, like an airbag deploying. It’s for this moment that you don’t care what comes next. You’re happy just to have survived it.   
Izzy shakes his head slowly, as if trying to decipher you. You ain’t expecting him to kiss you back, and you ain’t expecting him to do it as forcefully as he does. 

Izzy sits himself up on his knees, his hands fastening onto your face, angling you up towards him. A surprised noise sparks in your throat. After all this time. Shit, after all this time. 

You kiss him back, matching his pace, letting your hands wind round his waist, pulling his skinny fuckin’ frame closer to you. His hands drop to your shoulders to keep himself from fallin’ over you, and as your kisses get harder and more aggressive you stop and open your mouth, breathing hot and heavy, gauging to see if he does the same. To see if he wants your tongue in his mouth.

He moves back slightly and rests his forehead against yours, chest rising and falling, and you try to meet his eye.

He’s trying to think of somethin’ to say.

“How long?” He asks sternly, so close his breath is on your mouth. The fuck type of question is that?

“What the fuck type of question is that?” You repeat aloud. You duck your head and press your mouth to his jaw and his neck, and he groans throatily. 

“Axl,” he tries to get your attention. An’ he has it; just not in the way he wants. “Axl.” He repeats, and you hum in acknowledgement. You’re saying yes, I see you. Now hush.

He has to grab your face with his hands and pull you to look at him, so you stare at him with innocent eyes. He looks flushed, anxious, emotional, confused, conflicted, concerned–

“What’s up,” you whisper, trying to coax out his reservations.

He shakes his head, an’ you know he’s got a damn few. “I’m married,” he blurts out. When he says that, you can suddenly feel the cool of his wedding ring against your skin.

And what a weird thing to say, you think. Not _I’m not gay_ , or _what the fuck was that_. No, he said _I’m married_. 

Your eyes scan his face like a fuckin’ supermarket laser, searchin’ for any kind of meaning to the words he’s saying.

“What if you weren’t?” you ask him.

“I don’t know,” he says, and he looks like he’s gonna fall down like a house of fuckin’ cards. An’ you can’t stand to watch, and you can’t look away, so you kiss him again.

He’s responsive in a way that you wouldn’t expect for somebody who’s married. And he hums when you take his jaw and open his mouth and brush your tongue against his. Your heart leaps.

You rub his chest through the thin cotton of his shirt, feeling up the hard body underneath. An’ you don’t think you’re ever gonna be able to stop, not now, not ever. On god, Izzy – I ain’t never gonna stop for shit.

He sighs against your mouth and you shift up onto your knees, to which he falls back on his ass and grips the neck of your shirt.

“Are you gay?” You whisper against his mouth, ‘cause you need to know for sure.

“Ask me later,” is all he says back, like he’s some kinda magic hell fucked eight ball. 

And you slowly move your hands in circles across his chest, reaching up over his shoulders, letting yourself feel him because you ain’t know when you’re gonna get him like this again, an’ you feel his heart keeping steady pace under his clothes.

You look at him and he looks at you, and you lean in again but his hand on your chest stops you short.

“I don’t think–“ he begins and you pull away, eyeing him, ready to be completely offended. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

You can’t hide the hurt on your face. “Jesus, Izz.”

“Not now,” he hisses, suddenly glancing around insecurely. “Not here, okay? An’ not now. We can- christ, we can talk about it later. After fuckin’- after dinner, or somethin’, yeah?”

“An’ what the fuck are we gonna talk about ‘til then?” You narrow your eyes.

He stares at you for a haunting few seconds. “The weather,” he says eventually. You resist the urge to head butt him. Your hands are still firmly resting on his shoulders, you realise, and you pull yourself away viciously. He looks a bit put out; you sigh shakily and pull your legs up. 

You just keep shaking your head. “Why can’t we talk now,” you say rather than ask, watching the dogs play fight and clenching your jaw. “You know,” you spare him a glance. “While it’s fresh in our fuckin’ memory?”

You almost flinch when he grabs your shoulder and leans in viciously. “Because I don’t know what the fuck to say right now,” he hisses in your face. “Okay? I gotta think- I gotta fucking _think_ now.” He sits himself back in the grass and you shiver in the breeze. “Christ,” he spits out. “Why’d you- why’d you gotta go an’ do a thing like that?” His gaze lingers on you and it’s the only thing that gives him away beyond the harshness of his words; his eyes are too soft and sad. His face is too scared. 

“Felt like it,” you spit it right back at him and set your jaw. His eyes are soft, yeah, and his face is scared, et cetera. But your eyes are angry, an’ your face is angry too. 

He stares at you for a while. “You gay?” He asks, painfully nonchalantly, just like you asked him earlier.

“I ain’t answering that,” you tell him.

“I mean, I could throw out a guess,” his eyes narrow.

“You don’t know me half as well as you think you do, Izz.”

He laughs obnoxiously. “Clearly fuckin’ not!” His smile slowly disappears as he looks you up an’ down. “Clearly not,” he repeats. And his eyes just linger on you, on your face, pupils moving jaggedly back and forth as he scans your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your neck, your mouth, your eyes, your mouth.

Your eyes. 

Like it’s you’re a dog he’s just whistled for, you launch towards him. He meets you half way, grabbing your face with both hands.

He _pulls you into him,_ like he’ll die if he don’t feel your body and it makes you _loud._ You press your tongue into his mouth. He licks it tentatively. You groan. That scares him, you think, and he presses a hand into your chest and pushes you away from him.

“Axl,” he murmurs.

“Make up your fuckin’ mind,” you hiss against his mouth. “I ain’t playin’ games. I don’t have the fuckin’ time.”

_You want me? Tell me._ But he don’t tell you, he just stares at you with a face like thunder. You wonder if you’ve pushed your luck too far this time. Good thing you’re leavin’ tomorrow after all, huh?

Fuckin’ hell, you’re leaving tomorrow. You can’t leave like this. What’s with this horrible new fuckin’ habit o’ yours, where you just leave a trail of destruction wherever the fuck you go?

“Spare me a minute,” he whispers coldly, “‘cause I ain’t never been as confused as I am right now.”

You keep him squirming under your skeptical eyes. 

“You an’ me both,” you tell him.

“You’re a fuckin’ weird one,” he blurts out, shaking his head and laughing awkwardly. “You’re- Axl, what were you _thinking_?”

The colour drains from your face as you wonder if Izzy, having adequately surpassed all five stages of grief, had settled on being angry with you and your unfortunate boner for him.

“Alright,” you snap, cutting him off, not looking for any more humiliation in your life. You look away from him over at the horizon. “Alright, I get it.”

“I’m married,” he says again, quietly and somewhat woefully, like a lovelorn victorian poet.

_Never stopped the rest of us,_ you think, but you keep your mouth shut. You glance at him, out the corner of your eye, an’ you can see his cogs turnin’. You know what Izzy’s like when he’s thinkin’ because he really _thinks_ , an’ maybe you’ve sent him off into the deep end. 

“We– we could talk about it,” you clear your throat. “Let’s talk about it. I’ll... clear some things up.”

Izzy scoffs. You ignore it.

“Nah,” he says after a while. “We don’t need to talk. It’s cool.” Once again, he shakes it all off. Insane.

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” You don’t need this shit right now.

“I mean, unless you got anything _you_ wanna fuckin’ say to me,” he adds lazily.

You bristle. “You know, Izz, I think I’ve said my piece,” you tell him icily and look back towards the dogs. You squint against the sun and place your hand above your eyes. You stay like that, and when he doesn’t say anything else, you sigh deeply. “Right,” you stand up, “well. I’m going back to the fuckin’ house.”

“What?”

“I’m going back,” you hold your arms out. “Feel free to stay out here an’ do all the fuckin’ thinkin’ you wanna do.”

“Oh, Axl, don’t be like-“

“Nah,” you begin walking away and wave your hand angrily. “I gotta do some fucking... thinkin’ of my own. Clearly!”

You ain’t lying.

You acted on impulse. Nothing good comes from your impulses. You need to address, in the privacy of your room, what you did, why you did it, an’ the implications this now has for you.

Funny how after all the shit you pulled, this seventeen year fuckin’ friendship was always somewhat _salvageable,_ an’ yet in the space of a goddamn weekend you find yourself unsure of how you’re ever gonna be able to look him in the eye again. 

“...fucking histrionic!” He shouts after you, in a fit of frustration. You don’t hear the first part but your jaw clenches. You almost whip around an’ call him a queer; that’s your gut instinct. But it was you that kissed him so those words fizzle out on your tongue quite fast.

Regardless, you have a horrible temper.

“Eat shit, you fuckin’ asshole,” you shout across the field. You can see his silhouette slowly turn as he lazily looks over his shoulder. Ah, shit; he’s caught you. You’ve walked straight into a fuckin’ trap. Though it was always him that knew how to get you like this. Leave it to Izzy to push your buttons.

You sympathise, you do; in the midst of Izzy’s marriage troubles, you rock up and plant a fat one on his mouth about fifty yards from his goddamn front lawn. If Annika was here, she could’ve seen it from the window. But Izzy takin’ any sort of tone with you makes you bark like a rabid dog. Maybe ‘cuz you make allowances for him, where you don’t for anyone else, and it crushes your ego to see him disrespect that.

Christ, you overcomplicate it. In the simplest of terms... you trust Izzy with your life and he’s always been your friend, so it hurts when he hurts you. Hurts like goddamn _hellfire._

You stare at each other.

“Come back here,” he calls softly, sadly, gestures with his head. “Don’t go storming off again- come back, come sit back here.”

You stare at him. You can’t really see his face too well, silhouetted against the sun.

“We can talk now,” he drops his voice. “If you want to, we can talk about...”

You flush, caught off guard. Christ, he had to be the bigger fuckin’ person, didn’t he? You shove your hands into your pockets and shift your weight awkwardly.

“Please,” he adds. Like salt on a wound.

You nod as you approach him and you see his shoulders relax. “I’m sorry,” you shrug. “I’m used to fightin’ on instinct by now.”

He half laughs as you sit beside him, and he goes back to looking at the dogs. “Trust me,” he says dryly. “So am I.”

“We don’t have to... talk. You know. About. That. This.”

“I mean...” he scratches the back of his head, searching for words. “I don’t think I’d know where to... begin, shit, Axl.”

The air, as you could’ve predicted, is thick with awkwardness.

“Suppose a lot of things are startin’ to make sense,” he murmurs with wide eyes. “Think this is why... why I need to...”

“ _Think,_ ” you finish for him and you laugh incredulously, hanging your head. “Holy shit. What, you gonna analyse every goddamn word I’ve ever said to you? In a brand new faggy light?”

He snorts. You shake your head. “Leave it. We’ll talk later, I guess. Or not at all, I don’t care, I-” you cast him a side look. “I’m working through some stuff right now.”

He snorts louder. “I’ll say.” He laughs sportfully at his own joke and stops when he sees you frowning. 

He leans back instead, watching as Treader settles down into the grass a few yards away and Ripley dances round him with a second burst of energy. “Suppose they’re tired. You hungry? We’ll head back soon.”

“Mm,” you agree, standing up and brushing yourself down. You hold your hand out to help Izzy up and he takes it gratefully, using his other hand to brush the dried grass off his ass. 

He looks at you with deep, heady hazel eyes. They linger on your lips a little longer than usual. You instinctively move forward, as if compelled by god, and he lurches back.

“Let’s not,” he whispers and you look away violently, scoffing.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” your voice is dripping with embarrassment. He gives you an apologetic look and squeezes your arm. 

On the short list of the most humiliating rejections you’ve ever had, Izzy Stradlin unfortunately takes top prize. 

He whistles for the dogs and Treader sluggishly picks himself up and follows you as you walk, and Ripley bounds around your ankles with that vile little ball in her mouth.

Izzy clears his throat and you look up at him.

“What?” 

“Sorry,” he tries not to look sheepish, “for, uh, calling you histrionic.”

“That’s alright.” You shrug. “Sorry for... telling you to eat shit, I guess.”

“Apology accepted.” He says. “Glad to see this is turnin’ out to be one of our more civilised conversations.”

“Mm.” You try to catch his eye and wait for him to look at you. He does a small double take as he walks when he sees you looking, and he goes to ask you what you’re waiting for when you tell him, “I don’t know why I did what I just did.”

He flushes a bit around his cheeks and ears. “Listen, it’s- we’ll talk about it later, I just said.”

“I’m only tryin’ to apologise-“

“I know,” he clears his throat. “But that’s- we will talk, okay? We will.”

“After you’ve done your _thinkin’_ ,” you deadpan. He smirks as if to say, _yeah, sure, exactly._ An’ you wade back the way you came, through tall grass, not daring to say a word, walkin’ in time to the soundtrack of heavy dog breathing.

“Are you freaked out?” You ask.

He looks emotionless. “Yes,” he says. You’re surprised he’s so blunt. Though it ain’t worth beatin’ round the bush after whatever the hell jus’ goddamn transpired between you.

“That’s fine,” you breathe in, frowning. “‘Cause me fuckin’ too.”

An’ you walk in silence, set to the white noise of grass crunching under your feet, the dogs traipsing behind. When you reach the porch, Izzy holds the door open to let the dogs inside, and you follow after them. Only then, when he holds the door open for you, do you meet his eye, and he looks away like he’s goddamn ashamed to know you. An’ it stings. Like antiseptic on a wound. An’ anxiety makes your stomach churn, makes it wanna fall out your ass, but you gotta swallow your pride. 

He disappears into the kitchen and you settle down into his couch. When he reappears he drops a takeout menu on the coffee table in front of you.

“Going for a shower,” he says coldly and disappears again, like the ghostly little motherfucker he is. You hope it runs fuckin’ ice cold. 

You pick up the takeout menu an’ wonder where it all went wrong. This afternoon, you felt like you an’ Izzy were people again, christ, _friends_ again, but Izz was always good at lyin’ to your goddamn face. This morning you were at Stephen’s kitchen table lyin’ to _his_ goddamn face. An’ last night you were lyin’ to your goddamn self. 

The words on the menu blur into each other.

“Fuckin’ hell,” you stare upwards, willing those stupid tears to go away before they drop. An’ they do go away, of course they do, ‘cause they’re tears of frustration, they ain’t tears of heartbreak. They’re tears of anger and annoyance, an’ they’re tears of _why can’t I fix the way I am._ Tears of _why did I think this would fix the way I am._

But they don’t drop, they go away, you live to fight another day an’ you settle on a chicken chow mein. You slap it back on the table.

Izzy descends down the stairs some time later, freshly showered, in sweatpants and a grey hoodie with a towel round his shoulders. His hair, freshly washed, is brushed back an’ his face is weirdly exposed without it hangin’ in his fuckin’ eyes. He catches your eye, your mouth runs dry an’ you clear your throat. 

“I’m gonna grab one too,” you tell him an’ sidestep him. “Order if you want.”

“What are you havin’?” His voice is meek, like he ain’t used it in years.

“Surprise me,” you say, like an idiot, in your hurry to rush up the stairs. 

God, the night is gloomy. An’ it don’t seem like there’s a way out. Your way out is down the highway, an’ you don’t want to make that trip again until it’s fuckin’ imperative that you gotta. 

You take a long shower that lasts right up until you hear the food arrive. You throw on the old red sweater and head down to eat. You an’ Izz barely say two words to each other, an’ you watch the tv in silence.

Through a mouthful of foo yung, Izzy quietly tells you, “I hate that sweater on you.”

“I like it,” you say back, “an’ it ain’t yours, so what’s the problem?”

“Her brother’s an asshole,” he looks at you out of the corner of his eye. “An’ he dresses like one too.”

“An’ I’m not an’ I don’t?” You say instinctively, and Izzy looks taken aback at how suddenly self aware you seem to be.

“Touché,” he raises his eyebrows. “Wear it all you fuckin’ like then, I guess. Take it with you.”

“You mean that?”

“I mean,” he gestures at you with his fork. “I doubt he’s scramblin’ back for it.”

You snort.

“So yeah,” he shrugs, going back to stabbing at his food. “Take it with you. I don’t really care either way.”

You finish the rest of the dinner in silence, with both of your eyes flickering on and off the goddamn tv.

After you’ve eaten, Izzy instinctively takes your plate and loudly drops them in the sink before proceeding to ignore them for the entire night. When he returns from the kitchen, he carries two cups of tea with him and places one in front of you.

“You know I hate this shit,” you say without thinking. He gives you a look.

“Red clover,” he ignores you and sits himself back down. Treader sits himself down lazily at Izzy’s feet. You bristle at his beady little eyes. “Good for menopause,” Izzy adds.

“Very funny.”

“Thanks. Practiced my delivery for ten minutes while the water boiled.”

You scoff, and reach for your cigarette pack and lighter. You fish one out and slap the carton back on the coffee table. Then you realise Izzy’s lookin’ at you, hard.

“Hm?” You question. You feel the weight of the cigarette in your hand. “Oh.”

You flick your eyes lazily back from him to the cigarette to him, and then you nod slowly. “I’ll head outside,” you say, pocketing the lighter and placing the cigarette behind your ear as you collect your mug. Cold tonight, it’ll be cold tomorrow. You head out onto the porch and leave the door ajar.

The lighter takes a few tries to get it going, and you have to balance your mug between your chest and the crook of your elbow even though you definitely could’ve placed it on the floor, but you light up and you sway on the decking, wrapping your arms around yourself and smoking away.

Familiar love softens the blow of the evening as smoke anchors in your lungs. Maybe if you’re lucky these things’ll stop your heart from beating. Maybe if you’re extra lucky it’ll happen tonight. 

As you muse over the philosophies of life and death and cigarettes, distracting yourself from the man inside the house, with your gaze wandering unsupervised into the night sky, you begin to see eigengrau shapes take form in the shadows.

You think nothing of it until one of them starts walking towards you, an’ it looks like the worlds tiniest car with two dulling headlights. Your adrenaline kicks in and you squint to get a better look, goddamn, you shouldn’t’ve taken your contacts out.

At first, yeah, you think it’s an optical illusion, but then you realise that it’s two beady little eyes reflecting the light of the house.

“Holy shit,” you whisper, blinking, staying as still as a statue, not wanting to scare off whatever’s hanging round Izzy’s garden.

The little eyes come closer as two dark little paws step out of the shadows, and you find yourself face to face with a fox.

“Shit,” you repeat again to yourself. You edge closer to the fencing. “What’s up, kid? Huh?”

Curious, the fox sways to the left, sniffing along Izzy’s lawn and driveway. You’d throw him some leftover tofu if you could.

Christ. What a sight. 

You never see foxes in LA. You barely ever saw foxes in Indiana, but you lived in the suburbs close to the town. Izzy lives in the ass end of nowhere. Maybe he sees them all the time. But you’re mystified by this slender little thing in his front yard. 

“Axl, listen-“

Speak of the devil. 

“ _Shhh!_ ” You whip around to silence Izzy as he bursts through the front door. He looks wildly offended, and opens his mouth to retort when you wave a hand to silence him. 

You turn back to see that the fox has been alerted but hasn’t been spooked, and he looks sternly on at the two of you.

“It’s a fox,” Izzy’s voice drops low behind you, but you can hear his tone dripping in sarcasm.

“No shit,” you whisper, paying him no mind, eyes transfixed on the fox. You tale a drag of your cigarette and then a sip of your tea.

“You tellin’ me you’ve never seen a fox before?”

“Maybe once,” you shrug. “But never like this. Never this close up.” You go to turn around to look at him when you realise he’s moved right up beside you, staring out at his lawn. He catches you looking and moves away by an inch. You offer him a drag of your cigarette; his fingers brush yours as he attempts not to burn himself.

“They’re everywhere round here,” he says through a breath of smoke. “I was surprised when I first moved in.”

“Yeah,” you say quietly, and you both stand for a few seconds smoking back and forth and watching the fox sniff around the lawn. All of a sudden, his ears prick and he looks up, and he turns and runs off into the night. 

You let out a breath. “Insane,” is your review. Izzy laughs in his throat.

“That’s- yeah, sure,” he smiles, and he hands you the cigarette back and slips behind you to sit himself on the porch swing. “They’re getting ballsier though. One day they’re jus’ gonna let themselves in through the front door an’ turn on the goddamn tv.”

You snort.

Then you become acutely aware of the _situation_ , as does Izzy. He slams his hand onto the peeling wood. 

“Come sit here,” he demands softly.

“If you insist,” you try to put on a front but your voice has a telltale crack right down the middle. 

You drop the cigarette and sit next to him.

“Uh,” you say an’ scratch the back of your neck. “I’m tryin’ out this new thing.”

Izzy raises his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” you frown. “Where I just, uh, fuck things up wherever I go. Just for the fun of it.”

He bites back a smile. “Oh. That’s a new thing?”

“Well, yeah, ‘cause it ain’t on purpose no more,” you explain. He nods sagely. 

“I see,” he says.

“Yeah,” you say back. Then all of a sudden you say, “listen.”

“Hm?” he says, to signify that he is in fact listening. 

“I gotta ask you a question.” You frown. “While we’re here. And I’m assumin’ you’ve done some _thinkin’_.”

“Shoot.”

“What did you mean when you were askin’ me how long?”

“What?” Izzy says, confused. You sour when you realise you gotta remind him. 

“Um, _earlier_ ,” your voice drops. “When I- you kept- you were askin’ me ‘bout _how long_ an’ you didn’t- I didn’t know what the fuck that meant.”

“Oh,” he rubs his jaw. “Hm. _How long._ I don’t know if I know what the fuck that means.” He admits, and then he looks sheepishly at you. “I was... I dunno. I was surprised.”

You snort loudly and he looks a little put out that you’d laugh. You shake your head as your slurp your tea.

“Sorry,” you tell him. “Just- yeah, no shit.”

“Christ,” he rolls his eyes. “I guess I wanted to know _how long_ , as in how long you fuckin’- I don’t know, you been feelin’... that... type o’ way. About me,” he pulls a face. “About men.”

You frown. “Don’t flatter yourself, Isbell.” You pat yourself down before you forget that you left your cigs in the living room, and you go to curse before Izzy holds the pack before you.

“Lookin’ for these? Figured it’d be a good way to corner you.”

“You figured right,” you take the pack from  
him. “Wanna share one?”

“Sure,” he says. “It’ll make me feel easier about smokin’ ‘em in the first place.”

You turn inwards as you light up, to aboid the wind, with your knee hooked over your ankle. Izzy mirrors you, and you hold a little dull flame between the two of you.

You exhale soupy smoke an’ he gives you a look that prompts you to antagonise him. 

“What?” You say instinctively, on the defence. 

He shrugs. You take a long puff and pull your legs up onto the swing. You can hear the crickets in the distance and the faint buzz of the porch light, and for some reason you can’t leave the subject well alone. “You know, I thought you were askin’ me long I- you know, how long I- shit, I don’t know.”

“Well,” he turns to you sadly. “How long?”

You blink and give him a steady half smile. “How long what?”

He snorts, and leans his head against the chain. “Ain’t nobody out there who can avoid a question like you do.”

“Except for you,” you kick him fondly. “I think I oughta go to bed. My head can’t take this shit.”

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?” He asks. There’s a lot of weight to those words. 

You shrug and shake your head. “Late afternoon,” you guess. “Bet you can’t wait to get fuckin’ rid o’ me.”

He smirks. “It was nice to see you,” he says, all mock politeness. He turns away from you and stares out into the sky. 

“Was it really,” your voice is dripping with sarcasm. He bites back a grin. 

“You know you can be very agreeable when your head’s screwed on,” he clarifies.

“But that’s a rare occurrence these days,” you smile into your cigarette. You take another drag and then you offer it to him lazily. 

“You said it, not me.” He takes it from you daintily and takes a long hard pull.

“You’ll need nicotine patches once I’m gone,” you nod to his hand. He grimaces.

“Let’s not go there,” he gives you a warning glance and smokes away.

You snort, and without thinking, you reach across to pull the cigarette from his lips, just to get one last fuckin’ drag before he smokes it all. An’ his eyes widen, and his lips part, and you sit there holding the cigarette with him breathing onto your fingers.

You brush over his lips with your last three fingers and you feel the tiny hitch in his breath. You’re about to do something you regret. 

You pull back entirely and place the cigarette in your mouth, then you reach back and sweep your thumb over his bottom lip. He flinches but you grab his jaw and hold him in place.

“Axl,” he says warning, looking at you like you’re something disgusting. But for some reason, maybe it’s because you know it all ends tomorrow, you don’t really care.

You don’t think you’re disgusting.

For the first time, you think you might be in love; and that thought is disgusting, but not you. Not you.

You pull on the cig one last time and with your free hand, you throw it into the drive, exhaling into the night, your thumb still tracing the curve of Izzy’s defiant mouth. 

“Ax,” he breathes shakily, you can feel it.

His tongue darts out to wet his lips, a tell he’s had for years when he’s anxious, and you both freeze as his tongue catches you. 

You wait for him to wrench himself out of your grip. But he takes your thumb into his mouth and you gasp obscenely, leaning forward, your face twisting into a vile, obvious display of _want_. You pull your hand further down his face, leaving a trail of saliva glistening from his lips to his chin. You watch his eyes flicker back and forth, transfixed on the bottom part of your face, on your mouth...

You haul yourself off him and you jump up, pacing on the deck.

That was too erotic, that was too intimate. Pure, unfiltered fear is skating through your veins.

You can deal with loving him. You can deal with being in love with him. You can deal with his rejection. You can’t deal with _that_. Whatever _that_ was. 

Oh god, you can deal with his rejection.   
You can’t deal with his reciprocation.

You clasp your palms together over your mouth, like you’re almost goddamn praying, and you gesture at him when you turn round.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” you say firmly.

He makes no move to fight or agree, he just stares at you like he’s lost his fucking mind. You hope he ignores the semi you’re sporting. 

“Yeah. Um,” you shake your head weakly. “Night.”

And you almost fall over as you dive in doors, accidentally slamming the porch door behind you and you bring your hand up to your mouth, the same hand that had been tracing the curve of Izzy’s lips just moments before. You lost your nerve, and you left your mug on his porch. 

Is this how he felt when you kissed him today?

You want to hit something. 

You move up the stairs in a daze, slowly, as languid as a ghost, and you think that when you die, you should like to haunt this house for as long as it’s standing. You still have your hand clasped to your mouth. You barely register Ripley following you excitedly.

You walk across the landing and slip inside the bedroom, closing the door behind you, locking her out. You lean your weight against the door, and you take a deep breath, and you pounce forward and with all the rage in the world you kick the dresser. It echoes through the house.

You kick the dresser, you kick the wardrobe, you kick the bed and you go to punch the wall but you pull back when you remember it’s brick, and you’ll just break your damn hand.

It’s at this point your vision is blurred by the hot, sticky tears you were ignoring, and you have to sit down. You take deep breaths, and you accept that this wasn’t the path you were meant to take and you can’t change anything about it now. But it still hurts like shit an’ it can’t stop you from thinking about him.

You’re still thinking about him when you crawl under the covers. 

You’re still thinking about him when you hear him come up to bed. 

You’re still thinking about him when you hear a muffled thump at the end of the hall, following by faint cursing. 

That’s when you sit up in bed, listening, wondering what he’s doing right now and what he’s thinking and what the fuck he’s dropped.

You don’t know how long you stay there for. Sat up, leaning back on your arms, hearing; but you hear nothing. You feel small vibrations in the wooden floor, the creaking of a board, however, and then you hear footsteps leading up outside your door. 

And he knocks on the door, once, twice, and from outside he timidly calls in: “Ax? You awake?”

You blink. “Yeah,” you call back. You get out of bed, almost stumbling going to throw the door open. “Yeah, I’m awake.”

You see Izzy standing on the other side, eyes wide and dark, hair messy, lookin’ like he used to when he needed a fix. Hands balled into fists at his side.

“Uh,” he says.

You lean on the doorframe and look him up and down.

“What’s up,” you whisper.

He scoffs and rubs the back of his neck. “Uh,” he says again.

He looks ragged. He looks tired. He looks fatigued. 

Thing with Izzy is, he’s got these big doe eyes. Take up half of his fuckin’ head. An’ they used to shine like stars when he was stoned, but when he was high they’d grow sunken and dull and he’d get the worst bags underneath. Black and blue bruising all below those shiny eyes, an’ maybe it’s the light or maybe it’s just you but he looks like that now. 

He stands there with his fists balled at his side, and his right hand flexing and twitching.

“You hurt yourself?” You instinctively reach for his hand to get a closer look but he side steps you. You grab the wrong wrist with one hand. He grabs the other with his free one. And slowly he walks backwards, pulling you into the hall. 

“What are you doing?” your voice drops.

“Christ,” he murmurs back. “I ain’t fuckin’ know.” You can barely make out his face.

“I ain’t stopped thinkin’ about you since- all night, shit.” His voice drops to a whisper, like you’re teenagers in his bedroom and not adults in his hallway. “I don’t- I don’t know what to do about you, man.”

You breathe deep as he pulls you further into the darkness, and slowly into the bathroom opposite. You don’t know why you’re here but you ain’t payin’ much attention.

You stare at each other, then he lets go of your wrist and grabs you by the chest of your shirt, yanking you deep into the void of the bathroom, where there’s no windows, where it’s even darker, and that’s when you feel hands roaming all over you. 

“Izzy,” you hiss out his name with your arms moving round his shoulders, low low low, because saying it out loud makes it that little bit more real. “Izzy,” you say it again, ‘cause you like how his name makes your voice sound.

It says “Izzy,” like it was meant to.

Says “Izzy,” with a swirling, anxious lust.

Says “Izzy,” dangerously loud.

“If I’ve got this wrong, tell me,” he murmurs into your ear, low and dusty and midwestern. He‘s got the gall to talk like a fucking hick right into your goddamn ear. Christ, an’ you’ve got the gall to fall for it. 

You grit your teeth against the darkness, “but ain’t you always fuckin’ right?”

“Not lately,” he drawls back. You wanna kick him in the nuts for tryin’ to turn this into some kinda fuckin’ conversation. 

_Just- just keep touchin’ me, Izzy._

“Bad karma,” you search your brain for anything to say, shaking your head, eyes distracted by his lips; your voice is a murmur and you feel a cold hand on your neck.

“Mm,” he leans in, voice vibrating in his throat, and god, you can’t stop looking at the beautiful white of his neck, iridescent in the dark. 

He gently uses his body to push you up against the wall and you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“You’re gonna put the fear of God into me,” you blurt out. Some old hick expression your mama used to say when you were bein’ a cunt, you don’t know. You ain’t never said it before, you don’t know why you said it now. 

The fear of God makes itself known when Izzy runs his hand harshly over your chest, rubbing through the fabric of your shirt. You flatten your palms against the wall, almost laying yourself out vertically. 

“What are you gonna do?” you whisper, like he’s a fuckin’ sex offender or burglar or some shit. You want to slap yourself for the shit that’s comin’ out of your mouth but you can’t help it; your brain is lightin’ up in all different ways while you stand there, laid out, blinking against the dark.

Izzy ignores you, but almost in response he presses his lips to the bottom of your throat and your blood surges through your veins. You swallow, still breathing heavily, and Izzy’s hand cups your waist and runs up your ribcage. When he moves his head, he looks up at you through his eyelashes, and you reach up for his face. You need to have him now. Goddamn, you deserve him.

With his face in your hands, you kiss him deeply, and in direct response he pulls you in, holding you tight, kissing you violently. 

He braces his hands on the wall behind you. It’s obvious he’s hurt himself somehow. You take his hand and he flinches, and you can see the bloody red of his knuckles. You instinctively run your thumb over them, wet and hot and painful, as you can hear in Izzy’s voice when he hisses.

“Ain’t like you to go hittin’ walls.” You stare at his hand for what feels like forever. Maybe because you don’t wanna look at his face, ‘cause you know what’s gonna happen when you do.

You move your head and meet his eye, and then you’re against the wall with Izzy’s mouth on yours, your arms round his neck pulling him in, both his hands diving up the back of your shirt. Your kisses are quick, wet, violent, ugly, and they intensify when Izzy shoves his tongue in your mouth. You grip his head with both hands, stabilising the both of you, and you open your mouth passively, letting him do whatever the fuck he wants.

He groans in his throat when you swipe your tongue over his and you feel the vibration. He pushes you back against the cold tiled wall and grinds into you, and you feel the growing hardness of his cock press into yours.

“Jesus shit,” you whisper as you tear your mouth away from him, hands on his shoulders. He bites and kisses along your jaw and you can’t control the breathing you’re letting out, but it’s jumpy and airy and turned the fuck on. He grinds you harder into the wall. “Fuck. Izzy.”

He nestles his head in the bottom of your neck and groans shakily. “I want you,” he admits. Then he sighs sharply and lets you go completely. 

You stay pressed against the tiles, wondering what the fuck just happened. Izzy is leaning over the bathroom sink and running the cold water. “Goddamn,” he curses softly, hissing as he holds his hand under the faucet. “Hurts like a motherfucker.”

“What the fuck did you do?” You shake your head. “Let me turn a goddamn light on. Can’t see shit in this fuckin’–“

“Man, don’t turn the light on.”

“Come on, let me see.”

“ _Don’t,_ Axl.”

By the way Izzy reacts you wonder if maybe he’s concealing some kind of insane flesh wound or zombie bite or some shit, instead of embarrassing traces of masculine frustration. You expect to see blood everywhere. When you flick the switch, all you see is Izzy. Izzy, over the sink, running bruised and bloody knuckles under the water, but it’s Izzy. That’s when the facade is snatched away from you, and ah, right, that’s why he didn’t want you to turn the light on. 

‘Cuz, god, you can pretend almost anything in the dark.

He looks at you and sighs deeply.

“What did you do?” You gesture tiredly to his hands. He flexes his fingers under the water and turns off the tap, shaking it out. 

“Got... _mad_ , I don’t know,” he shakes his head and sits himself on the edge of the tub. “Shut that light off, for fuck’s sake. Where are your cigs?”

“In the bedroom.” You’re more than happy to shut off the light.

“Go get ‘em,” he softly demands. “Let’s smoke, an’ we can- we can have that talk, I guess.”


	8. Sunday Night Revisited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re a nightmare, but you’re so fuckin’ beautiful I could cry. Now shut the fuck up or I’ll put my dick back in that stupid little mouth of yours.”_
> 
> On Sunday night, Axl and Izzy let it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cringe too much when writing sex so i never proofread. sorry in advance.

Izzy slides down onto the bathroom floor, fishing a cigarette out of the pack you brought him.

“Hey, you know what’s funny? The only boy who could ever reach me,” he muses as he lights up, “was the son of a preacher man.”

The orange of the flame bounces off his bloody knuckles. 

“Hilarious,” you frown. He offers you the pack and you take it, but decide against grabbing a cig and throw it back to him. “I’ll share yours.”

He takes a drag and looks at you. “Will you?”

The indignity of his reply pangs in your chest. “Yeah, I fuckin’ will, Izz. Know why? They’re my fuckin’ cigs.”

He manages a half smile.

“And you don’t smoke no more,” you remind him as you settle yourself down on the floor opposite him. “Goddamn, it’s like you never fuckin’ quit.”

The smile disappears. “Yeah,” he sighs, and then he frowns. “Jesus,” he rubs his head, “I don’t know what it is with you and the need to fuckin’… destroy me but as soon as you’re in my personal fuckin’ bubble I always need a goddamn cigarette.”

“As long as you’re reimbursin’ me, Izzy, I don’t care if you’re smokin’ cigs, pot or crack.”

“You don’t even care,” he suddenly says loud and accusatory into the darkness of the bathroom. His voice echoes out among the tiles so you hear it from all ends; it nearly gives you vertigo. “You literally don’t give a fuck. I ain’t had one a’ these since ’92 then you turn up and my entire world just fuckin’-“ 

He stops himself before he gives too much away.

You breathe in and out sharply, then you lean forward on your hands and knees and jab a finger into his chest. “Unless I strapped you down an’ stuck the needle in your goddamn arm myself,” you hiss into his face, “don’t you _ever_ put that shit on me.”

“Why are you here?” he asks quickly and loudly, to nobody in particular, as if he’s finally getting it out of his system. “You fuckin’- you come here to fuck me? Or just, I don’t know, _antagonise_ me? I’m really- Axl, you gotta help me out here, I wanna understand but- Christ, I don’t know.” He rubs his head again. “You’re always... I always feel like you’re up to somethin’ evil.”

You grow quiet. You go to explain yourself but you can’t. You drop your head in your hands and sigh. He sits silent opposite you and watches you compose yourself, with glassy eyes. You sit up suddenly, rub your nose, and lean back against the tiles. The adrenaline from your sudden make out session dissipates in your stomach.

“Can I have a cig?” You ask solemnly.

“Don’t know why you’re askin’ me,” he throws the pack and the lighter at you, and you don’t quite catch either of them.

“When I was first drivin’ down,” you mumble through your cig as you light up, “I was bouncin’ between this bein’ some fuckin, like, Blues Brothers _mission-from-god_ type shit, and- I don’t know. I saw a place to go and I just- just... tunnel visioned. An’ you know I ain’t never been on that whole, you know, that _gypsy_ kinda bullshit you are,” and he visibly bristles when you say that. “But that’s how I get, I-“ You’re shaking your head and when you look over to Izzy, he just looks confused.

“The way my head gets,” you scratch your cheek, “I just... _do_ shit, man.”

He nods pensively.

“I think what put me on - and kept me on - the road was the idea that you’d-“ you stop again, trying to articulate yourself and you frown, “that you’d understand the need to… not be in California.”

He’s quiet for a while and then shrugs. And that stings like a nettle.

You clear your throat. “Remember what you said the other night about how I should never have been famous?”

“What,” he laughs as if it’s somethin’ incredulous, “you agree with me?”

You don’t say nothin’ but you take a deep breath.

He raises his eyebrows. “Christ,” he chuckles. “Guess I am always fuckin’ right.”

“Hey, man, that intuition o’ yours,” you flash a sad smile. He smirks.

“But you know, Ax,” he says quietly. “Sometimes I really do think, if not for Guns, where the fuck would you be?”

You both grow quiet, and you both speak at the same time. 

“Locked up,” Izzy goes to suggest.

“Dead.” You tell him, and it’s just a fact.

He turns to look at you, and you know he knows it’s true, deep down.

“Christ,” he says softly.

“Dramatic ass,” you sniff, taking a drag on your cig, “don’t cry for me, Argentina. This ain’t about pity. I got some issues is all.”

He nods in agreement.

“And so do you,” you warn him. “ _You_ got issues too. Hey, you got _izzues._ ”

He pauses and looks at you grimly. “Funny.”

You snort, both at your own joke and at how deeply unfunny the entire situation is. 

“I think,” he says clearly, looking you in the eye, “with the shit we been through, I don’t- I don’t think it’d be a good idea to see each other anymore.”

“What?”

“I think it’s...” He trails off sadly. “I don’t see a possible fuckin’ instance where this,” he gestures between you, “ _that_ , what jus’ happened, could... work.”

“I don’t even know what this,” you gesture back, “is. What, you never wanna see me again, that what you’re sayin’ all of a sudden? Jesus, Izzy, you can be a crazy fuck sometimes, chill the fuck out for a sec, okay?”

He raises his eyebrows, but stays silent. 

“If you’re talkin’ bout us...sexually,” you say firmly, ignoring the lump in your throat, “say it with your goddamn chest, yo. Are you that scared of your own boner that you’re gonna run away from me every fuckin’ chance you get?”

He smirks, but stays silent. 

And you’re strangely defensive, anyway. “I ain’t about to jump into your fuckin’ arms, Izz- you don’t think we should fuckin’ talk ‘bout this before you– man, you came to– it was _you_ that came to _my_ room.”

He glowers, but stays silent.

“You tellin’ me you ain’t wanted this?” You’ve made yourself angry and you raise your voice. “Tellin’ me you ain’t wanted me under you since we were fuckin’ sixteen? Somehow I’m supposed to believe that the idea of me is so disgustin’ that it makes you punch the goddamn wall?” You gesture angrily at his hands. 

“Axl, before you go any fuckin’ further,” Izzy’s voice thunders out of nowhere, “can I get a fuckin’ word in?”

You blink. “Christ,” you sigh, then shake your head. “Yeah. Of course.”

Izzy goes to open his mouth but you find yourself unable to stop. “I– Shit. Sorry.” You shake your head. “I just– Sorry. No, you say what you gotta say.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, and finally says, “sugar, you’re too much for me.”  
Then he leans his head back, opens his eyes and tells you, “...hurts to know you sometimes.”

An’ you don’t even know what he means but it makes your blood run cold. “Hurts to–“ You repeat incredulously. You shake your head. “Are we in a fuckin’ soap opera? You gotta tell me what you want, Izzy, tell me what you mean, I don’t...” you keep shaking your head, mouth moving but no noise comes out.

And words are wobbling on the end of your tongue that you’ve wanted to say for years, that you know threaten to ruin whatever’s left of you and Izzy. Is there anything left to ruin? You don’t want to take a gamble because you don’t like your odds.

“Am I a bad kisser or somethin’?” You narrow your eyes and Izzy snorts. “I ain’t playin’ fuckin’ charades with you, man. You know where I stand.” When you say that, he looks at you with sheepish eyes. “Izzy, you- you just _felt_ where I stand. _Talk to me._ ”

He stares at you for what feels like forever, then he licks his lips and settles against the wall. “Axl, I–“ and he laughs as he says it, shaking his head, like he’s about to subject himself to the most humiliating thing in the world. He stares up at the ceiling, pulling his legs up, placing his palms flat on his knees. To the ceiling, he says, “I really used to be on your side, you know.”

The words _used to_ hit you like his fist against the hard brick wall.

“And I don’t know if I am now,” he says wistfully. “Jesus, you– the things you do to me, man.” And he tips his head, eyes twinkling, and your years of experience when it comes to dealing with Izzy’s delayed emotional growth become useful when he leaves you to fill in the blanks.

“You never told me,” you spit the words out like you’ve sucked venom from a wound. Exactly what he never told you is easily inferred, based on how hard he just kissed you and how sad his voice is.

His eyes snap to yours. 

“You never fucking told me– _seventeen_ years, Izzy, we’ve fuckin’ known each other. You didn’t think to _tell_ me?”

“Tell you what? What the hell could I have told you, Axl?” He snaps, viciously puffing on his cigarette.

“I don’t know!” You shake your head incredulously. “I don’t know, because you won’t tell me shit! I’m so sick of having to guess what all this,” you gesture wildly, “means! You could have- you could have told me you’re queer, Izzy, that’s for damn sure.”

“It wasn’t a secret,” he rubs his jaw, strangely passive. “I ain’t queer but I wasn’t– I-“ he stumbles trying to find the words. “This ain’t– shit, jesus _fuck_ , fuck this shit, man.” Izzy’s voice is pitchy, and he drops his head in his hands.

You sit there watching him, your heart banging against your chest and threatening to break. He breathes shakily, composes himself, and then leans back against the wall.

You grip your knees with your hands. “I can’t run from it no more, and neither can you. I’ll lay out all my cards in front of you right now if that’s what you want.”

“Don’t be a martyr.” As if by magic, he regains his icy composure. You could learn a thing or two from the way he does that. You’ll ask him how he does it one day, when you ain’t threatening to break on his bathroom floor. Instead, you take a deep breath and shrug. 

“I’m gay, Izzy.”

And you see his spooky silhouette freeze. A soft glow round his mouth where his cigarette lights up as he takes a long pensive drag, and he exhales deeply. “Well,” he rubs his jaw, “who’d ‘a thought.”

“Don’t say you knew, for fuck’s sake.”

“I mean, the way you were kissin’ on me just then gave me a pretty good clue.”

“Funny,” you deadpan.

“That wasn’t a joke,” he chuckles in his throat. “Were you or were you not kissin’ on me?”

“I was kissin’ on you,” you take a last drag of your own cigarette and put it out in the sink beside your head. “Hard.”

A sickly, satisfied smile spreads across his face. You quickly add, “not that I should be strokin’ your ego by tellin’ you that.”

“Hey, shot for shot; I was kissin’ on you too. But you already know about me.” He sniffs, voice still uneasy, and he shifts and sits on his legs, pointing at you with what remains of his cigarette. “Let’s talk about you.”

“I told you I was gay. You dodged the question. I ain’t squirmin’ under no microscope, say it with your fuckin’ chest.”

“You wanna know if I’m gay?”

“I wanna fucking know what you feel for me.”

Izzy blinks, cogs turning, and tips his head. “Now, that’s assumin’ I do feel somethin’ for you.”

“Don’t be coy,” you warn him. “I’m burnt out, I’m fuckin’ tired, motherfucker. I don’t have the energy for your games.”

“Do I gotta feel somethin’ to kiss you?”

“To kiss me the way you did? Yeah. Yeah, I fuckin’ think so.”

Izzy stays silent, smiling through his eyes suspiciously. After a while he says, “if I tell you, what’s it gonna change?”

“I’m over here beggin’ you to stop speakin’ in riddles, Izzy.”

“If I tell you how I feel, what’s it gonna change? You gonna... gonna stay here with me? You gonna head back to LA? Answer my calls? Or you gonna freak out like you do an’ pretend this shit never happened?” Izzy frowns. “If you’re really gonna lay your cards out, I’ll lay out mine.”

“Fair’s fair,” you say bitterly. “I’d ‘a thought you’d know me better than that. You know why we stopped talkin’.”

“‘Cause you’re unpredictable as shit.” His voice croaks as he takes one last drag and stubs the cigarette out on the floor next to him. He frowns at the mark it made. 

“No, you know why. You left, Izzy, and you know I needed you.”

“Keeping you from losin’ your mind was never my responsibility. You hired people to do that.”

“Motherfucker, you talk to me like I’m insane. You talk about me like I’m insane, and I ain’t! I’m tryin’ to fuckin’ tell you–“

“What, tell me what?” He sidesteps every word you say, trying to trip you up, trying to make you lose your train of thought and you almost explode.

“I don’t know, what should I tell you? I’m sick of you using my fucking prescription as a checkmate, for one! I got feelings, and I‘ll tell you what I’m feelin’ if you think you can handle it, hell, maybe it’ll shed some light on why I been so harsh. But with the avoidant bullshit that’s comin’ outta your mouth, I don’t even know if I should waste the energy. Do you want to fuckin’ know, Izzy?” You’re shouting at him now. 

“That ain’t what I mean when I say–“

“Well, how ‘bout now you start sayin’ what you _do_ mean?”

“Jesus, Axl, you really wanna fight about this?”

“Fight about what? I fuckin’ _know you_ , ass! And I know how you try so fuckin’ hard to fuck me off at every possible interval, but we always end up here! Why the fuck is that?! Is it you? Or is it me?!”

“You think you know everythin’.”

“You’re the one out here knowin’ everything, with your third fuckin’ eye, tellin’ me this ain’t gonna work ‘cause you’re fuckin’ still scared of... scared of bein’ a _fag_ at your big age.” You’re speakin’ some ferocious words to him through gritted teeth.

Izzy’s raging. “I was never scared of bein’ a fag–“

“Oh, is that right?”

“I’m not scared of shit, least of all _you_. This ain’t gonna work because I ain’t fuckin’ twenty four no more. I see you for what you fuckin’ are now, and you’re an unstable, narcissistic motherfucker.” He‘s lookin’ like he don’t even believe half of what he’s sayin’. “And I got a _wife_ , Jesus, Axl.” He says that like he’s just remembered. You think maybe he really has just remembered.

“You realise you were kissin’ on this unstable narcissistic motherfucker about fifteen minutes ago, right?” Your tone is light but your heart is breaking, breaking, breaking by the second. You gesture to his knuckles. “I ain’t the unstable one here.”

“If I’m unstable, it’s your fuckin’ fault.”

“It’s my fault that you let me get in your head?”

Izzy lets out a spiteful laugh. “No. Sorry, I forgot, nothing’s _ever_ your fault, is it?”

“Plenty of things are,” you grit your teeth. “This ain’t. Goddamn it, Izzy.” You snap at him viciously. You rub the bridge of your nose, shooing away threatening tears, soothing the oncoming tension headache. 

“What do you want?” You ask timidly, wearily, shakily into the darkness. And yet it feels like it echoes off the tiles on the walls.

Izzy stays completely still, completely silent, still just a shadow against the wall. 

“You want me? That’s what you said before. An’ I’ll be damned if I don’t want you too,” your voice threatens to break. “I don’t even– I don’t need you, Izzy, far from it. But you been playin’ with me this weekend an’ it ain’t fair.”

Radio silence.

You stare in his direction, with what you know are shiny eyes. “I fuckin’ want you so bad it hurts.”

And maybe it was a trick of the light, but you could’ve sworn you saw him smile.

“Oh, god, Izzy,” like those awful dreams where you lose all your teeth, the words are jus’ fallin’ right out of your mouth. “I’ve wanted you my whole damn life. You know that? And I _hated_ you, I hated you for the things you did, and goddamn I hate you for lettin’ me stay here when we both know damn well I don’t deserve it, an’ I hate you for talkin’ to methe way you are right now.” You breathe heavily. “I hate you so, so much. An’ I don’t want to. An’ I also kinda don’t. If you said- if you even just _sympathised_ with me, for the shit you put me through, I’d be-”

He stays silent, because he knows you ain’t finished.

You swallow the lump in your throat. “You know damn well what I‘m getting at. Don’t make me say it.”

He doesn’t speak and you hate yourself more than anything right now, for allowing yourself to lose the emotional upper hand. You almost flinch when Izzy reaches for your face; he pulls you into him, kissing you harshly, and you let out a soft call of surprise. He pulls you down onto the bathroom floor–for fuck’s sake, the bathroom floor. In a low voice, he asks you, “you know how dangerous you are?”

“Don’t fuck with me,” you snap viciously, and he looks you down with eyes that could put out a fire. “You’re either married or you ain’t.”

An’ you know that Izzy knows what you mean when you say that: you’re either with me or against me. Married is a code word. It’s a fucking metaphor. 

“I’m married,” he confirms, and your fighting words die in your throat. “But I- shit, Axl. Shit.”

You hover over him, where he’s pulled you down onto the floor with him. You shake your head. “This ain’t it,” you tell him, them dead words already rotting and decaying and going back to the earth. You go to stand up and go back to your room and pack your shit away. ‘Cause Izzy’s ripped you right open and for what?

“No,” Izzy dives forward and grabs your wrist. “No, please, wait.” The force of his grip almost pulls you flat on your face, and you let yourself be tugged towards him. You unceremoniously fall into his chest and slowly, like you’re repulsed, you begin to move away. But them big eyes stare straight through you. Like they’ve always fuckin’ done.

“Wait for what?!” You whisper incredulously into his face. “Your fuckin’ divorce papers?!”

You’re so hurt, and he’s hurtin’ too. You’re hurting in different ways, ‘cause you’re hurting like someone who don’t think they deserve anything, an’ he’s hurting like someone who don’t know what they want. An’ there’s that sense of urgency in his eyes, like he’s got a fuckin’ metal detector in his head that’s screechin bloody murder, tellin’ him that _this is it, this is it,_ and that hurtin’ behind his eyes is pure confusion and distraught: confusion and distraught at having to face that you might be his last chance at feeling something. And how cruel life is to make it so that that’s the case for him, and so that that _feeling something_ means having his heart ripped out his chest, because you’re you and that’s all you’re good for.

In that vortex of his eyes, you feel a coldness and a pain like you’ve never experienced. An’ you’re drawn to him.

He’s still holding your wrist.

He’s still holding your wrist when he leans forward and kisses you deeply. And you find yourself gripping his shoulders, hunting for a warmth, sat in his lap and melting into him.

It could’ve been so different. 

He kisses you like he’s terrified you’re gonna get up an’ leave if he stops. Trying to anchor you into him, his hand leaving your wrists and trailing down your ribcage, holding your hips, sighing against your mouth. He pulls away so slowly, careful not to spook you, and licks his lips.

“I gotta have you,” he says remorsefully, like it’s the most shameful thing in the entire goddamn world.

“You can have me,” you find yourself saying, to a man who sees loving you as a death sentence. How come you always give him what he wants? “If you want me,” you say sternly, tellin’ him you ain’t to be trifled with. “Then you can have me.”

“I want you,” the words spill out his mouth, tripping over one another. “I fucking want you.”

He dives forward to kiss you deeply and you groan, caught off guard. He pulls your body flush against him, hands darting up your sweater and pressing into the small of your back. Your hands grip his shoulders like it’s all gonna fade away if you let go. You’re moaning like a whore, as well.

“Izzy,” you hiss as he rocks against you.

“You taste of fuckin’ _cigarettes_ ,” he ignores you, groanin’ breathlessly.

“So do you,” you tell him, “so do you.”

Hs hand slips further up your sweater and ghosts across your chest. You involuntarily arch your back, the tiniest amount; Izzy clocks onto this, and all of a sudden you’re on your back and he’s forcefully pulling the hem of the sweater up to your collarbone, exposing your torso. He makes a noise in the back of his throat as he runs his hands all over you, and you find yourself breathing hard. He looks at you like he’s been presented with some kind of dumb fuckin’ Good Will Hunting math problem. Like he just can’t figure you out. 

“Are we-“ you breathe against the skin of his neck as he ducks down to bite your jaw. “Are we gonna...?”

“Christ, shut up,” he half laughs, willing you desperately to be quiet just for once in your life.

“Izzy-“ you choke out your words and grip against his shoulder blades as his hand brushes the bulge in your pants that slowly hums louder against your leg. He presses his palm against you and you can feel his eyes on you as he watches your reaction. Your reaction is to flush bright red and sit up on your elbows, as if to tell him to stop.

You feel and watch cool fingers move against the hem of your sweats, dipping underneath carefully and cautiously, and your breath hitches. Then you’re stuck under his weight, rock hard, coming to terms with your ridiculous attraction to Izzy Stradlin and his never-ending quest to have nothing to do with you, as he begins to stroke your aching cock.

“Shit, Izzy,” you begin to shake with the pressure of sitting up on your elbows, gripping the back of his neck with your hand and twisting your fingers into loose curls. “How are you so fuckin’ good at thi- _Jesus_.” You arch your back.

“Big words, Billy,” says the silhouette in the darkness. 

“Please don’t fuckin’ call me that while you’re jackin’ me off.”

He half laughs, and sighs against your chest as he rests his head in your neck, staring down at himself jacking you off.

“Man, shut up.” You hiss into his cheek, even though he ain’t said anything. You hear his heavy breathing next to your ear and the gravity of the situation does not yet sink in: you know that you’re with Izzy, and you know you’re being jacked off. It has not yet sunk in that you’re getting jacked off by Izzy.

You can’t help the noises that escape you. Soft gasps, sighs, shaky breathing. You feel Izzy breathe into your neck.

“Oh yeah, that’s it,” he murmurs every time you make a noise. “That’s it, that’s it, this is what you want.”

“God, yes, it is,” you bite out, gripping onto his shoulders. 

“I’m going to make you feel so good,” he swears to you, his hand moving faster and faster, edging into dangerous territory. Then, all of a sudden, as if he can sense it, he pulls away and sits back on his legs.

“What are you doing,” you breathe, though it’s perfectly obvious as he tugs your sweats down your legs, exposing your hard cock and your shaking, pale thighs. “Are you...”

“Am I...” He mimics you dryly but he doesn’t take his eyes off your cock, and you feel his cold hands move up and down your thighs. 

“Are we gonna...” you search his face, trying to meet his eyes.

“Yeah,” Izzy’s voice shakes dangerously, like even the implication of what you’ve just said has already made him jizz in his pants. He finally looks up at you, eyes dark and glassy and hungry. “That’s the plan.”

You lie on back on the bathroom floor – jesus, Izzy, the fucking _bathroom floor_ – with the sweater still up around your collar bone, looking up at him. “I– I can’t tell if you’re jokin’ or not.”

You’re calling out to shadows, really. And you almost jizz yourself out of sheer fright when Izzy sticks his cold fuckin’ hands on either side of your face. He kisses you. You don’t respond, and you sharply inhale. You wait for it to be over. He pulls back slightly.

“Axl, I ain’t know what we’re gonna do about this,” he says, low and rough. “But I know I gotta have you right now or I’ll die.”

“You’re a fuckin’ gentleman, Izz. Talk to your wife like this?”

“By all accounts, you may as well be my fuckin’ wife.”

“But I ain’t.”

“You ain’t,” he says sharply, in your face. “So I’m gonna talk to you like the fuckin’ man that’s been slammin’ into my life at every single most inconvenient fuckin’ point in the past fifteen fuckin’ years.”

He gets closer and breathlessly into your ear he says, “God, yeah, I wanna fuck you, Axl.”

The desperation in Izzy’s voice and the need in his eyes makes you stiffen. The words that may well be comin’ out his mouth are tellin’ you to say yes, goddamn it. 

You involuntarily, subconsciously shift and spread your legs. 

You open your mouth to say somethin’ but he pulls your pants off in one quick motion. Your stomach sinks when you realise you can’t talk your way out of gettin’ fucked now; this is it, an’ it’s happenin’, and you’ve waited so damn long–

Izzy throws his own to the side. In an attempt to get at least half of the upper hand, you take his head in your hands and kiss him deeply, like you’re two fuckin’ teenage potheads again, maybe you’re askin’ him _go easy on me, Izz, I’m sorry,_ and he warms into it, licking your mouth tenderly as he guides you back to your fucking place on the floor. 

“Christ,” he sighs against your mouth.

“How’d you always know how to get me like this,” you whisper.

“Ain’t never had you like this.”

“You know what I mean,” you hold back a groan when he starts touching you again. “You know what I mean.”

His head sinks down in between your legs.   
He licks a stripe along your painfully hard cock. 

“Don’t tease,” you warn him, unable to disguise the tremor in your voice.

So he swallows you whole. You quake. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” you whisper, like you’re horrified. The sight of mousey brown hair splayed across your thighs, you can’t handle it. “You suck a lot of dick, Izz?”

For some reason, he don’t reply. Maybe it’s the cock lodged in his throat. He moves his mouth up the length of your cock, tongue skimming the veiny underside, and you catch him looking up at you with those huge, dark eyes. When he reaches the tip, his lips close around the head and you jerk up. His tongue traces you, and you instinctively grab a fistful of his hair to try and get _some_ control of this goddamn situation. 

He’s so good at it. He’s so good.

You throw your head back, cold air hitting the back of your neck and shoulders, and you cough out jagged groans and sighs into the air of the bathroom.

“If you keep this up-“ you warn him.   
He removes himself completely and thrusts his face into yours. 

“You can’t even shut the fuck up when you’re getting your dick sucked?”

“Ain’t no fault of mine.” Your voice shakes as you square up to him, popping the illusion of confidence. You make the mistake of looking into his eyes. His pupils dilate.

“You okay?” He asks.

You sit up further onto your elbows. “Yeah,” you say, “yeah, just- christ, don’t ask me that, man.”

He blinks at you an’ you have to shove his head with your hand to remind him to get back to you.

“What the fuck are you waitin’ for?” You ask him.

“Oh, I see,” he tilts his head, eyes sparkling. Shinin’ like stars. 

He dips his head again and strokes the base of your cock with one hand, tentatively licking the tip with his tongue.

“Ugh,” you moan involuntarily, not looking to give him anything he don’t deserve. But he wraps his lips around the head of your cock and you feel your heart in your throat; your eyes scan the bathroom ceiling, because if you see Izzy sucking your cock you’ll burst into flames. You debate telling him to stop but your cock walks your brain on a leash, and instead you run your fingers through his hair and push his head down further onto your cock. He makes an agitated noise in his throat that vibrates through you; you retaliate with a pitchy grunt.

“Christ,” you murmur dreamily. Izzy seems to like your head in the clouds, an’ he gently continues sucking the tip of your cock. You push his head down again and this time, he grips your wrist and jerks you up. “Can you fuckin’ _stop that_? Hey, how about I gag you on my fuckin’ dick and see how you like it?”

Izzy still has your cock in his hand.  
Izzy definitely just felt you twitch.

He looks at you devilishly. “Oh.”

“Don’t,” you’re practically begging. “Don’t you make fun of me.”

“Well, you talk a lot o’ big game, Axl.” His voice is relentlessly soft. Which is sweet an’ all but your cock is relentlessly hard, and it makes you writhe in discomfort. 

“Christ,” his voice darkens as he watches you, and his tongue darts out to lick his lips. “You’re desperate.”

“Shut the fuck up!” You hiss. “You gonna do somethin’? Fuckin’ do it! Stop starin’ at my dick like it’s some fuckin’... sideshow act! Goddamn!”

“Fine,” he hisses right back, “You want me to do somethin’? Turn the fuck around and shut up.”

You pale. “Wait, what?”

“Turn around,” he commands.

“Now, wait a second-“ you begin to object, and he hushes you.

“Trust me,” he whispers. An’ you shouldn’t, but you do. You trust this nonconformist little shit with your life.

You breathe heavily, palms flat against the linoleum.

“You about to fuck me, Izz?” Your voice vibrates off the floor. 

Again, he hushes you. “No,” he whispers, “I’m about to fuck those beautiful goddamn thighs o’ yours.”

He lands a harsh slap on your ass. Your breath hitches.

“Christ-“ You choke on your own words. “You’re a kinky motherfucker. Who knew, huh?”

“I’m beggin’ you to shut the fuck up,” he whispers, and you know by the tone of his voice he’s concentrating. 

Your entire face is burning hot. You’re so, so embarrassed. You’re too embarrassed to be turned on but your fat fucking rock hard cock says otherwise.

He rubs his hand over where he slapped you and your stomach sinks.

“Don’t be nice to me, goddamn it,” is what spills out of your mouth. 

“Oh, yeah? Really?” Izzy scoffs, and you wanna roll your eyes. “You want me to beat you black an’ blue?”

“Try it an’ see how far you get,” you grumble. You’re momentarily silenced by a violent slap cascading down on your upper thigh. Your body ricochets against it.

“Christ!” You hiss.

“ _As per your request,_ ” he says sourly from behind you. 

“Goddamn it, you’re a freak,” you‘re just garbling words out now like some fuckin’ demented muppet as he runs his hands over your hips and pulls you upwards.

“Mm-hm, yeah,” he says, not listening. “Keep your legs closed- yeah, like that.”

You go to spout some more garbage when you feel him press the tip of his cock in between your thighs. You let out a guttural groan. It’s your fucking thighs. It’s between your goddamn thighs, so why does it feel so good?

He pushes into you, hands firmly on your hips, pulling you into him in a way that feels so erotic you expect the ground to just open up and swallow you.

“Shit,” he breathes out shakily. Then he breathes in, “wait. Hold on a second.”

“What?” You sit up on your elbows and attempt to twist round. “What’s going on?”

“Turn back around.”

“Can you make up your goddamn mind?”

“Turn back around, Axl, I need you to do something for me.”

“Jesus. Ain’t this enough?” You do as he says. “What?” You blink up at him and catch him sweaty and gaunt, and- oh, painfully erect. 

“Open your mouth,” he says.

You stare at him.

“Open it,” he says again, and for whatever fucking reason you do as he says, and he guides his cock right in between your teeth.

You go to protest, but there’s something in the way-

Oh, god. Oh, _god._

“Ah,” Izzy makes a precarious pitchy noise as you moan, sending vibrations through his cock. The head hits the back of your throat and you gag in reflex, but for some reason you ain’t chasing him away. For some goddamn reason.

He dislodges himself slowly, his cock moving backwards through your throat, brushing along your tongue, thick and girthy in your mouth. As the head leaves your lips you find yourself lingering, tongue dragging around the tip.

“Fuck,” he whispers harshly, pulling himself out of your mouth.

Your jaw aches, longing for him to stay.

Your heart hammers in your chest when you realise you’ve just had a cock in your mouth. You’re salivating. You look up through your eyelashes at Izzy above you: “Goddamn,” you tell him. “Years ago, you’d be dead by now if you’d ‘a tried that on me.”

“What can I say?” He deadpans, rubbing your leg and guiding you back how you were. “I’m a thrill seeker. Get back on your knees.”

You don’t have the time, energy or interest to argue, it’s pointless. It’s very rare that you’d give Izzy exactly what he wants but lucky for him it’s what you want too. Suffice to say you’re happy to indulge him just this once.

Newly lubricated with your goddamn spit, Izzy slides himself in between your thighs, grazing your balls.

“Ugh,” you hang your head, cock throbbing painfully. “Goddamn _thrill seeker_ , you sure are takin’ your damn time with this.”

“Fuckin’ right I am. Why you talkin’ like you don’t want it all of a sudden?”

He’s got you there. You bent over for him the second he asked.

“Makes me feel better ‘bout it,” you begrudgingly admit, still face down on the bathroom floor. He snickers.

“God, your ass is amazing,” he says, and he runs his hands all over it like it’s the goddamn holy grail.

“Yeah, well, it’s yours.” You say without thinking.

He pauses and your face burns, but he just half laughs. “Is it?” He says, low and somewhat menacing.

You don’t reply. He leans forward, hovering over your back, fingers ghosting across your stomach, an’ he says hot and wet into your ear, “What do you want?”

You can’t really suppress the shiver that rips through you, and you fidget to conceal it. “Shouldn’t I be askin’ you that?”

“You know what I want, don’t act fucking coy,” and he presses his palm against your chest, pulling you upwards and flush against his chest. He takes your hand and wraps it around his hardening cock.

“Christ,” you murmur, squeezing involuntarily, spaced out in a state of sexual disbelief.

“Tell me what you want,” he says again. “Only so much I can do with the shit you’re dropping me now.”

You groan. “I don’t-“ You find yourself stroking him. “I don’t know- don’t make me say it.”

He reaches round and strokes your own cock, gentle strokes up and down.

“I don’t have to make you say it,” he says somewhat sweetly, and sinks his teeth your neck. You know what he’s getting at: you always get what you want. Yes. He’s right. He’s right to a point, ‘cause you don’t know what you want right now. Do you wanna be fucked by him? Shit, maybe.

“ _F-f-fuck’s sake,_ ” you find yourself unable to hold it back. He drops his hand and pushes you back to the floor, ass in the air, and slides his cock firmly back in between your legs. He grips your ass so tight he’s gonna leave a bruise. An’ you don’t goddamn mind one bit.

“Tell me what you want, I wanna hear it from that... from that goddamn whore mouth,” he growls out.

“Christ, Izz,” you breathe, squirming underneath him. “I want you.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to... want you to... _fuck_ me, goddamn it.”

“Say it again,” he’s getting vicious. “God, say it again.”

“Fuck me,” you gasp, reaching down to touch yourself.

“Tell me you need me to fuck you,” he’s gone mad with power, spouting shit he’s bottled up through years of loveless missionary with his goddamn wife.

“I... I- _fuck-_ ”

“Tell me you need my cock inside you,” he continues to demand from you, to take from you, as he fucks your thighs and the ghost of his erection rests firmly in your throat.

“Oh my god-“ you gasp, unable to breathe against the guilt and the humiliation and the arousal. Your head is swimming and you can’t think, all you can feel is Izzy’s cock brushing your balls repeatedly and your heartbeat vibrating through your head and your arms. 

Izzy’s hand moves down to rub your ass, circling, and then squeezes, spreading you and all of a sudden, he viciously pushes a finger inside you. You call out.

“You motherfu- some fucking _warning_ , Izzy- oh my _god_.” You melt. “Oh my _god._ ”

“You like that?” He hisses behind you. It don’t feel good, but goddamn, it’s erotic. Goddamn, it’s Izzy fingering you an’ it’d be enough to make you come.

“What’s on your mind, sugar,” Izzy whispers soft and low, and he curls his finger and brushes-

“Shit!” You go to jolt up but his hand reaches forward and holds you in place.

“You like that?” He asks again, this time very soft and genuinely curious.

“God, fuck,” you blink back tears. “Yes. Yes, I goddamn do.”

“Good,” he purrs. “God, I’m gonna make you feel so fuckin’ good, honey.”

He reaches round to touch you and you moan pathetically, rubbing yourself into his hand. 

He breathes shakily. “Christ, you really want it,” he says, like he just can’t believe it.

“I’ve wanted this for- I’ve wanted this,” he keeps on talkin’ but it sounds like white noise to you. You’re just focused on the pleasure coursing through your body.

“This is wr-“

“Shut up,” he says, like he can sense what you’re about to say. “Shut the fuck up.”

“ _You_ shut up, an’ _take your finger out my goddamn ass!_ ”

“You’re a nightmare,” he half laughs at you. “But you’re so fuckin’ beautiful I could cry. Now shut the fuck up or I’ll put my dick back in that stupid little mouth of yours.”

_Hey, man, don’t threaten me with a good time,_ you think. “Well, what are you- ugh, Izz, can you- not do that-“ You fight against your words as he continues playing with your asshole.

“You don’t like it?”

“I can’t hear myself think. Can’t- shit, can’t- Izzy-“

“So don’t think.” He says coolly, and then you feel a second finger forcing its way into you. 

It’s very easy not to think. Scary easy.  
It’s easy to fight with him too. Even when you’re both stripped down bare to nothing else but the attraction you have for each other and hard naked bodies, you still continue to antagonise each other. It ain’t right but it’s you an’ Izzy, an’ you two ain’t never been right.

“I can’t take this, I need to fuck you. Tell me I can.”

With your arms supporting your head down on the tiles and your ass in the air, you groan in response.

Now, Izzy knows you too fuckin’ well. Inside out, your mannerisms, your moods, your weaknesses, your comforts. He knows that when you were pissed off with him an’ wouldn’t talk, a low toned grunt always meant ‘no’ and a neutral groan meant ‘yes.’ Curse your slutty windpipe.

“Fuck. Okay,” he says. Your head is swimming through waves of overstimulated vertigo where you don’t even notice what’s going on until you feel him aggressively grab your ass, spit loudly onto his cock and feel the head pressing against you.

“Wait,” you jump up and try to wriggle out of his grasp. “Wait, wait, wait-“

“It’s okay, I know what I’m doing.”

“You planning on going in fuckin’ dry?”

“Trust me.”

“I don’t trust you, not one fuckin’ bit. You wanna fuck me, get your ass in your fucking nightstand- Izzy- Izzy, I’m serious- at least, holy shit, at least stretch me out a little more, stop it-“

“ _Okay,_ ” he whispers frantically all of a sudden, pulling away, lips diving down to meet your ear. “Don’t you freak out. I’ve got you. Trust me. I’ll go grab somethin’. You stay right here.”

And there is a little something repulsive in how intimate it feels when he does that, and you know why he don’t wanna leave the room.   
He leaves and returns in seconds but those seconds, like he probably feared, were enough to make you reconsider.

He lubes up his cock, lines it up to your asshole, and panic kicks in.

“Izzy,” you say warning, about to tell him to stop. “Izzy-“

And then he slowly moves into you and you let out a strangled call.

“I’m in, I’m- it’s okay, I got you, _oh_ ,” you feel his breath on your neck and you tense on instinct. “Okay. You gotta relax, Axl. You gotta relax right now.”

“Fuck, how am I meant to- _fuck_ ,” you gasp against the tiles, your asshole gettin’ fucking stretched out and burnin’ like fuckin’ hellfire. “Shit,” you breathe heavy. “Take it- take it easy- shit.”

It don’t feel like nothing else you’ve ever felt before. With every inch he pushes into you, your cock throbs against the floor.

“You’re too tight, sugar,” he murmurs, voice raising an octave. One of his hands is braced by your neck and the other rubs a circle against your ass. “Relax.”

“How about I shove _my_ dick in _your_ ass an’ you can do the relaxin’?” You snap over your shoulder, and you regret it instantly as he thrusts into you. You yell out.

“How about you stop complainin’,” he suggests breathlessly. 

You can’t get a real word out. “Izz- Izzy-“ you try to grip onto his arm but he moves, sitting up, grabbing your hips with his hands. 

“I’m gonna fuck you now, okay?”

You got your mouth so full of fighting words that you can barely make a noise. You manage a low, pitchy moan, and he doesn’t wait for a real answer.

It feels like- it feels like whatever’s happening ain’t meant to be fuckin’ happening.

“Hit me,” you blurt out, and he doesn’t even think about it before he sends a sickening smack down on your ass. You reserve a gasp for that, in between the others. “Again. Again.”

“You’re a kinky motherfucker,” he breathes.

_Always have been,_ says the voice in your head. _Don’t let my therapist hear that though._

“Don’t talk, just hit me.”

“I’ll do more than hit you.”

And this skinny fucker behind you begins to build up a pace, slowly but fucking surely, and you cringe at the discomfort you’re experiencing. You need to be hit to be distracted.

“Hit-“

And you haven’t even finished your sentence when he reaches round and grabs your throat, whispering harsh in your ear: “I ain’t hittin’ you. I’m fucking you.” 

_Whether you like it or not_ could quite possibly be the implication but lucky for him, you like it. Also you could knock him out with a swing of your elbow if he really cornered you, but that ain’t in his nature; he’s good-natured. Always has been. He’s a dumbass man, like the rest of you, clouded by bad decisions and horniness and the instinctive need to fight to survive that neither you nor him grew out of, but he’s kind, somewhere amongst the clutter of it all.

Well, he has his moments, at least.

“Then _fuck me,_ goddamn it,” you cry out in a very uncharacteristic way.

He pulls on your hair. “You think you’re in a place right now to _demand?_ ”

You’re astounded by the dominating role he’s absorbed. He probably is too, but like you said, this must’ve been lying dormant in this loveless marriage he’s got. Or christ, maybe it’s reserved solely for you.

“What, you gonna- shit- you’re gonna stop fucking me out of spite?” You bite back at him. “You ain’t wanted me _begging_ like this?”

“That ain’t begging. Fuck, you feel good, though. Oh, God. Look at that goddamn ass of yours, it’s perfect.”

Your heart swells with pride. “Shut the fuck up.” You whisper, but you don’t mean it.

“I’ve thought about sticking my cock in you for so long. Filling you up, I’ve thought about you bendin’ over, wonderin’ how easy it’d be an’ look, look how easy you are.”

An’ Izzy’s fucking you good right now, so you let him speak. Like your cock ain’t leaking thinking about what you look like to him, thinking about him pushing himself into your tiny hole like you’re his and he ain’t care if he breaks you. _You_ care, but you’re inclined not to if not caring feels this good.

“How easy are you?”

You rest your head against the floor, swimming in pleasure and passion and emotions. “Real easy,” you croak out. What a pathetic answer. “I ain’t never not been yours,” are the next words that fall out of your mouth.

“ _Shit,_ ” he breathes behind you, almost breaking the fourth wall, and he pulls you up with your back flush against his chest, one hand gripping your wrist and the other clasped around your jaw. He mumbles and moans incoherently into your neck and you grip his arm with your free hand, so tight your knuckles turn white. He ain’t gentle with you now. No way in hell.

He pounds into you, dizzy with pleasure, and you feed him every dirty little noise you can scrape from the bottom of your throat. 

“You’re mine,” he says, almost incoherent. “You’re a fuckin’ whore, an’ you’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine.”

With every thrust, he reminds you.

Tears fall freely down your cheeks, spilling onto his hand. He doesn’t notice.

“What are you?”

“Yours!” You choke out. “Goddamn yours! Goddamn! Fuck!”

And then he all but shoves you away from him, like he’s just decided he’s a straight man who loves his wife. You hit the tiles.

“Ow, whoa, what in the hell-“

“Turn around,” he gasps out, “I gotta see you.”

You nod, still with that look of indignity on your face.

“Sorry,” he drops his voice, like he’s scared someone’s gonna hear him. “Was that too rough?”

“Shut the fuck up,” you hiss at him, and you shove your hands into his chest. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

“You’re one mean little bitch,” he shakes his head, dragging his eyes up and down your body. Then he grabs your legs and pulls them open, throwing one over his shoulder and pushing himself entirely back into you.

Then he does something you never expected: he leans down and kisses you again, forcefully on the mouth, and fucks you like this. You’re getting the loveless missionary, huh? No, you ain’t. This ain’t loveless. Well, it might be. Who’s to say? 

“Fuck,” you breathe onto his mouth. “Don’t stop. Fuck me. Please.”

“Keep sayin’ that.”

“Fuck me, I need you to fuck me. Need it bad, Izzy, goddamn, _fuck._ ” You arch your back, staring up at the ceiling, strangled noises escaping you. You blink an’ look down, and you catch Izzy’s big glassy brown eyes.

For both of you, just for that split second, get a wave of awkwardness, like seeing someone you vaguely know in the supermarket. But immediately after that, as he’s thrusting into you, you get a glimpse; a different glimpse, a horrible fucking glimpse of what it’d be like if you’d figured this out sooner. 

Stringy chunks of black hair.  
Beads and glass. Crooked teeth, jagged bones, misplaced freckles, hazel eyes, tattoos, trackmarks, trackmarks, trackmarks-

It’s none of that. It’s thick brown hair, ghosts of black at the ends. Thin cotton. Crooked teeth, yeah, and not as skinny as he used to be, tanned skin, big eyes brown in the darkness of the bathroom, tats are faded, the odd scar along his veins. Serving as a daily reminder of his own mortality, maybe. But god, he’s the same person, and he’s fucking you like he used to fuck his girlfriends in the bed you shared and when you remember that, you call out.

“Don’t stop,” you beg again, hoarsely into his neck.

“Couldn’t if I wanted to,” he moans shakily into your ear. 

“Oh, god, don’t stop,” you repeat, not talking to him as much as you are begging to yourself, or praying to god. You got your arms around him, clinging to him like a fucking baby koala. “Fuck me, please, J.”

He groans into your ear. “Christ, anything you want.”

“You. You. Fucking- you.”

“You can have me, goddamn it.” He’s breathless. “Fuck, Axl. Shit. Oh, God.”

You grip his face and kiss him deep, sloppy, tongue in his throat, and he moans. It vibrates through you. You moan back.

“Ah, shit,” you pull away, staring down incredulously at your leaking cock. “I’m- J, christ, Izzy. Izzy.”

“What?”

“I’m- don’t stop. Don’t you stop. Don’t you goddamn-“ he cuts you off by plunging his tongue into your mouth. You sigh wearily, and then it turns into a moan.

“Come for me,” he hisses against your mouth. “God, you’re gonna come for me.”

_Like hell, asshole,_ is what you should’ve said. Should’ve, but didn’t.

He grips your thigh brutally. “Stupid whore,” he says, and you’d scream bloody murder at him if he said that in any other way. But god, the way he says it tonight-

You half sob his name, and you throw your head into his chest, heaving, coming violently over your stomach.

But he doesn’t stop. He just keeps pounding into you, using you to pleasure himself, and it’s so fucking good but it’s all so overwhelming and your eyes sting, _goddamn_ , you’re a grown man-

“ _Fuck,_ ” he groans in your ear and you feel him coming hot into you.

That’s when the tears start.

You have one hand clasped to your mouth, willing them to go away, and the other round Izzy’s neck, desperate for some security.

“Oh my god,” he moans softly, breathing heavily. He looks up at you, eyes whimsical and happy, but when he sees the tears in your eyes, his face twists into something far more serious.

“Hey,” he breathes. “Hey, what?”

“I love you, man,” you say blearily, one arm hooked around his neck like a fucking chokehold, the other one supporting you up. Your hair falls in strands down the side of your face, and fresh tears spill down your cheeks, dripping onto the old red sweatshirt still hoisted up your abdomen. 

“It’s okay,” he soothes you, stroking your hair, so much more gentle than before. “I know. It’s okay.”

“It ain’t,” you whisper. “It was never okay, Izzy.”

“I’m tellin’ you it is,” his voice is soft, commanding, validating.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do about it?” Your voice is so quiet you wonder if he even heard you. “What can I do about it? ‘Cuz I sure as shit can’t live with it.” But you ain’t half as sure you can live without it. 

“You’re a dramatic fuck,” Izzy whispers into your hair. In the way that he holds you, the way that he rubs your back and strokes your hair, you notice that it’s like he’s holding his dog. “We can work it out. Ain’t the end of the world.”

“It hurts,” you try to raise your voice and it cracks. “It hurts so fuckin’ much.”

He rests his chin on your head, still holding you. “Yeah,” he says pensively. “It hurts like a motherfucker.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and let it wreck through your body. “I need you to tell me what you’re feelin’. Be straight up with me,” you beg him. “I can work somethin’ out then. I can handle it, if you jus’ fuckin’- fuckin’ _tell me_.”

Izzy takes a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t know if it’s as simple as that.”

“In the simplest o’ fuckin’ words, Izz, please.”

He sighs. “I’d do anythin’ you fuckin’ wanted, Axl, if you asked. I’d do anythin’ for you. Things you don’t even know.”

“Leave your wife,” you crack a joke, but he don’t respond. You can’t even see if he’s smiling. “That was a joke.” You clarify.

“I know,” he deadpans. But you still ain’t convinced he wasn’t thinkin’ of a way to do it.

You know what he means when he says it, ‘cuz you know Izzy inside out, even after all this time. Whether he _loves_ you or not, you don’t fuckin’ know. But you know by the way he holds you that he couldn’t let you go even if he wanted to.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, deeply, sincerely.

“So am I,” he tells you. Deeply. Sincerely.

And he leans back, looking down at you, and kisses you softly. You cup his face, the sleeves of the sweater still clumsily falling over your hands, and you kiss him back long and hard. 

You sniff. “Sorry for bein’ a wreck tonight. Just sick of... holdin’ it in.”

He sighs against your mouth, and acts as though he wants to say something; instead, he kisses you lightly on the lips again.

“I’m really trying these days, Izzy.” You whisper. “An’ it’s fuckin’ hard as shit, but I’m doing my best.”

“I can tell,” he murmurs, while the two of you stay wrapped in each other’s arms. “You’re a crazy fucker but I can see you tryin’.”

“Jus’ feels like the world’s started fallin’ apart around me.” You shake your head slightly. “Can’t believe I just told you I loved you.”

“Did you mean it?”

“Goddamn. I don’t know.” You stiffen, then you pull away from him, resting your hands on his shoulders, and you look him straight in his beady fuckin’ eyes. Big glassy brown eyes; you ain’t never seen him look so impressionable. “What’s gonna happen if I say yes?”

Izzy swallows and looks away anxiously, then meets your eyes and squeezes the arm resting on your shoulder with his hand. He doesn’t answer you, but that’s okay. That’s okay. 

“We can’t stay here all night,” he says eventually, fatigue in his voice.

You don’t realise how exhausted you are until you think about moving. “I think I need a shower,” you frown. You shift uncomfortably, suddenly realising you’re marinating in and are full of Izzy’s jizz. The thought almost makes you hard again.

“Use mine,” he says softly, fingers twisting in the hair at the nape of your neck. “An’ then come to bed.”

“What?” You look up in surprise. You can see his eyes for the first time properly and they flicker with some humour, but he won’t antagonise you. Not now. 

“Spend the night with me,” he says.

“Alright,” you say back.

And he helps you to your feet. You tug the jumper back down over your stomach, suddenly deeply self conscious.

“Remind me to throw that goddamn thing in the washing machine,” he gestures towards it with a nod as he picks up his own clothes. “Better yet, remind me to throw it in the garbage.”

You bristle. “I’ll take it. You know I like kitschy shit.”

“God help me, but yes, I do. Except I’d rather not see you prancin’ round in his- man, I hate that guy. If you saw him, you wouldn’t like that sweater as much as you do.”

“All it is is a fuckin’ thrift store pullover,” you roll your eyes and bend down to collect his shirt. You hand it to him and he takes it, brushing your hand, leaving you both a little sour.

“Christ, you’ll die on any fuckin’ hill you see so long as it means that you can disagree with me.” 

“I gotta give you a hard time ‘cuz I like you.” You meant it as a joke but it came out a little too serious. You meet his gaze as he hands you your pack of cigs and you drop it like a hot potato.

Christ, this bathroom is poisonous. Every word that comes out of your mouth feels like a death sentence, but you’re barely audible beyond the thick cloud of sex hotboxing this tiny lemon bathroom.

You follow Izzy back to the bedroom; you tug the sweater down over your ass, suspiciously self-conscious, walking like a goddamn kindergartener that just pissed its pants. Izzy strides on ahead, ass out, no fucks given, all the confidence of a man that’s just turned Axl Rose gay as hell. You gotta be real special to do that, so it don’t bother you. Not really.

Izzy beats you into the bedroom and slips through to the bathroom, turning on the shower and letting it run. On exit, he grabs a thin shirt from the carelessly strewn pile of clothes on the chair and pulls it over his head. You get a glimpse of messy hair and collarbone.“Let that run for a sec an’ then hop in,” he says casually as you stand awkwardly in the doorway. He’s looking after you an’ for some reason, it eats at you to let him. One day in the future, when modern medicine has a billion new discoveries, you’ll find out exactly why your brain is wired in a way that compels you to constantly and consistently antagonise the one person probably closest to you. Until then, of course, you’ll continue to do it but shit, not tonight. Have a day off, Axl.

“You’re too good to me,” you tip your head playfully in his direction while you fiddle with your cig carton, fully aware you’re still bright red in the face and coated in semen underneath that sweater. “I shoulda’ married you years ago.”

Izzy snorts loudly, but your attempts to tease him make your stomach hurt a little ‘cause you said the word _married_ , which connotes his marriage, which connotes Annika, which connotes a whole other person about to get hurt as a direct result of _you._

“You’re runnin’ up my water bill standin’ there gawkin’,” he tries to hide a smile. “Go get that shower.”

So you do. You step into his bathroom an’ close the door, drop the sweater and cigs on the floor, step into the warm water an’ you can feel him still in there when you reach down. The thought almost makes your dick twitch again but you’re also alone with the thoughts of what a vile person you are, which keeps you soft as all hell and determined to shower as quickly as possible.

You clock Annika’s powdery floral body wash on the side of the tub. Imagine if you crawl into bed smelling like his wife. Ha.

You wash quickly, wrap a towel round your waist and grab your cigs from the floor.

“One last cigarette before bed?” You say as you linger in the doorway, playing with the pack. He looks over his shoulder and visibly hesitates.

“One to share,” you offer, and pull one out of the pack. 

“Sure,” he gives in. You’re already lighting up before he finishes speaking. 

“My asshole is in hell,” you murmur through the cigarette. Izzy snorts.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he shrugs, fumbling around in his nightstand for something or other.

“Here,” you hold out the cigarette. “Got any clothes I can-“

“Help yourself,” he says as he all but dives for the cigarette. As he puffs away, you grab a shirt from his dresser and drop the towel carelessly amongst the clothes on his chair.

You sit yourself on his bed, riddled with anxiety, and settle yourself against the cushions with your hands on your stomach, staring at the ceiling.

“These motherfuckers,” you feel the bed dip as Izzy sits down, “make me _sing_.”

“I can’t live without them,” you lean over and reach for it, ready to pluck it from his mouth, careful not to burn yourself. “It’s true. You get these motherfuckers who stop smokin’, an’ they’re like _ooh, I’m so healthy, my life’s so much better now,_ like bullshit, it is. Those fuckers are liars. Wait a minute, _you’re_ one of those fuckers. Ha! An’ look at you now!”

Izzy cracks a small smile as he leans back, eyes fluttering closed. “Sure. I’m the biggest fucking liar in the universe.”

You look at him, peaceful, just for a second. You lay on your stomach, hovering close to him, smoking silently. Just watching.

Then, encouraged by a rush of nicotine, you say:: “You know, I don’t sleep well at all these days.”

“No?” he responds, looking at you sleepily out of the corner of his eye.

“Some nights, I think the devil’s got me,” you tell him. “I think there’s some evil in me. I can’t explain how I know. I just do.”

You know you sound crazy. He doesn’t say anything, but he makes a sound in his throat. You pass the cigarette back to him.

“Hm,” is what it sounds like. He stares up at the ceiling and takes a long drag, then he finally speaks. “Why do you say that?”

You think hard, just for a second. “I don’t feel like there’s any other explanation.”

“In your world,” he murmurs, looking at you from the corner of his eye, “you’ve never come across another possible explanation?”

You frown. “Not in my world,” you tell him. “There’s an explanation out there but it ain’t in my world.”

“Your world,” his voice is low and reassuring with an edge of humour, “is poison.”

He’s right.

“Maybe,” you find yourself stumbling down a philosophical hole. “But thats the thing; it’s _mine_ , an’ I don’t know it from nothin’ else. I don’t have no other point o’ fuckin’ reference, Izz. I’m stuck like this, I just gotta learn to... to navigate, I guess. An’ I’m on my own with it, ‘cuz nobody else knows what it’s like to be... _sick,_ like I am.”

He makes that noise again – _hm_ – and his hand slips away and squeezes your bicep in a gesture that you suppose is meant to be comforting. He offers you the cigarette back but you decline. 

“You’ve told me things this week I wish you’d have told me years ago,” he says.

“Like what?” You laugh viciously. “ _I love you?_ ”

He goes quiet and your laughter dies out. The air gets real uncomfortable; until he speaks again.

“Things could’ve been a lot different,” he rightfully says. 

“You think things are gonna stay the same?” You ask him.

“Who’s to say?” He shrugs, both of you semi-naked in the bed he shares with his wife, in his own house, in the town you both grew up in. He drops the cigarette in a forlorn glass of water on his nightstand. But things have already changed. In the space of twelve hours, in the space of three days, in the space of a long weekend, things have undeniably and irreversibly changed.


End file.
